


Land of the Slaying Moon

by Rosethorn



Category: Bleach, InuYasha - A Feudal Fairy Tale, Nekogami Yaoyorozu, Okami, Pom Poko (Heisei Tanuki Gassen Ponpoko), Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi | Spirited Away
Genre: Amaterasu as Shiranui (unless in needed otherwise), Gen, Gratuitous use of Japanese Mythology and Folklore, Inuyasha Alternate ending Character cameos, Kagome is a BAMF!, Karakura town is Kamiki's village present incarnation, Kon under a different name, Nekogami Yaoyorozu Character cameos, Spirited Away Continuation Character cameos, even if I am rearranging the map a bit, even if only in passing, will probably add more later
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-24
Updated: 2013-08-14
Packaged: 2017-12-06 07:05:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 50,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/732804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosethorn/pseuds/Rosethorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Working title that may change later. Rating may change later. It should be noted that I am using a lot of the most recent information so if you are not caught up with the most recent manga, there are spoilers.<br/>Aizen is not the only entity to take notice of Ichigo's potential. He should have looked into reasons why Karakura suddenly regain its Juureichi status. Or why it became known as "the town of the empty seat (throne)" as opposed to "the village of the divine tree".<br/>Shiranui was mostly in it for worth while companionship and a modern day Celestial envoy. Ichigo just wanted to make sure June 17th never happened again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prolouge: That Day After the Rain

**Author's Note:**

> All rights reserved who make money from the original sources of the stories used. I just come up with interesting ways to put them together. Reviews and Constructive criticism welcome.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is with in Shiranui's power to clear the rain from the skies. Even in the skies of a world in another's soul.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 4/16 just some editing. partly because i went back and realized i got some terms mixed up and had remembered where Shiranui's shrine was wrong.

Disclaimer: I do not own, and will not ever own the parent stories of this fanfiction. I will not make money from this and the rights go to the appropriate people. Also, I am not an expert on Japan’s various religions. I am mostly using Wikipedia and Google search for my info. If you see something wrong with what I write, let me know with your source, but I might not change it in this story. And yes, I changed the location of Kamiki Village. Tito Kubo said that Karakura was in western Tokyo and if you go far enough west there are mountain ranges so it works (even if it was likely a reference to other towns natives would get the reference to).

# The Land of the Slaying Moon

# Prologue: That Day After the Rain (雨上り)

 

                The goddess most famously remembered as Shiranui in this region (even if the tale was mostly forgotten when Kamiki village and the surrounding territory became Karakura town and other nearby municipal areas as Tokyo expanded and ages passed), was lounging at her shrine that was closer to Sakuya’s Konohana great tree now than it had been after the defeat of Yomi; up on the mountain rather than down in the valley. While she could always go the distance to where her other incarnation’s descendants stayed (much closer now that they lived near Tokyo) for nicer accommodations, that would probably turn into work and, as the goddess was taking a well-deserved vacation after the domino fall of events the past century, she was trying to avoid that. She had hoped that the political situation concerning modernization and related problems would calm some after the Bakumetsu, though that thought was ruthlessly stomped on after the many wars with foreign powers accumulating in the war known as the Second World War. While the major gods were able to shake off the majority of the damage to their belief caused by the fall out of that last war, a few well timed pranks in broad daylight that would be witnessed by many but censored out of the occupied nation’s news ensured that, a lot of the practice of the beliefs waned.

 Many shrines not well known or in well lived areas have been forgotten, and even at those shrines, offerings were only sparingly offered if not actively attended. House shrines and large temples were still in use, but often only the bare minimum was done to insure the upkeep as many of the younger generations purposely ignored them when being taught as children and therefore did not pass the knowledge to the generations after as it was old and irrelevant. Sacred knowledge that should have been passed down to dedicated miko, priests, and other mediums were caught in a tug-of-war between cold academia critics to be argued over the plausibility and reliability of the texts, top secret knowledge of the royal family, and plain greed. And while Shiranui knew that humanity was on the knife edge of their science breaking through the veil of myth and magic and seeing that neither side was wholly wrong after all, she also knew that the other side of that edge will likely cause humanity to fall into cataclysm once more.

What caused Shiranui to go on this vacation now was because it seemed more and more that the goddess and her fellows were only causing more problems by being easily available to the mortal government than by being away. After all, it wasn’t like her descendants couldn’t contact her in case of emergency. They just needed to use their knowledge and training to pick out the hiding Yatagarasu of the flock of crows at the imperial palace. Unless it is truly dire and Yatagarasu seeks her out on his own. Shiranui knew that her and her human descendants disagreed on what exactly dire was so it was better this way. After all, she was a primary goddess of the _land_ of the rising sun, not the one who stands at the beginning and end of time and fixes all problems to a single person or people’s benefit. There was a larger system that needed to operate beyond the scope of Japan; a stock market crash caused by another country’s economic failure was not cause for calling on all of a nation’s kami spirits to curse them, no matter what her children’s government thought of both the Russians and what they did in their spare time. It will just cause it to fail again. And again. And…

Shiranui flicked her ears in interest as a distant sound drifted to her. It sounded like a pained creature that had given up survival and only wished for the predators to snatch it and end its agony. The type of creature did not sound like one that normally lived on these lands, nor even those that weaved their own dimensions for their clans to protect themselves from conflict with humans and had done so since before humans were this numerous. It had nearly the same quality of grief, agony, and loneliness that is known for the various yūrie that most of the Shinigami were now just broadly calling Hollows; but there was something lacking in the sound that made the goddess doubt the accuracy of her assessment. If she was in her human form, Shiranui would have frowned but settled with narrowed eyes and laid back ears as she stalked through the woods and undergrowth.

There was a graveyard reasonably close to where this shrine was now; a beautiful location to appease any lingering dead, despite all the cement humans deemed necessary now-a-days. The large majority of those lingering dead that had been there before Shiranui went on vacation were passed, the celestial wolf having blessed the souls with safe passage to the Soul Society and had done some minor tasks for those who lingered for a good reason (desire to know of the fate of a child now orphaned, a budding serial killer’s victim desiring justice, etc.), all things that properly trained priests or noukansha would have taken care of in the past before this unfavorable rise in secularism. Normally it takes months or, more normally, years for a dead human soul to fall to its grief and turn into a hollow. Though, it could be an older hollow coming from the valley or the Heuco Mundo thinking that there was an easy snack in the graveyard. However, this was Shiranui’s territory, the great wolf of legend; she could defeat any… human child?

The great wolf crouched in the under growth as she watched the small frame of a child not even half way grown scream and flail on the ground in tantrum. Some might not see a child throwing a tantrum as a noteworthy disturbance to a great goddess (even one in a minor goddess form), but this one was one that the wolf goddess saw as _special_. This child had, in the past, not only seen her divine markings clear as day, but also could hear her speak as though she had taken a human mortal guise and spoke actual words. When he was younger (before his first Shichi-Go-San), he had some trouble sorting through her divine, inhuman speech, missing subtleties the way any one learning a new language would, unimpeded  by normal boundaries between mortal and divine. But by the last Flower Viewing Festival (still one of the most important festivals of this region, especially with Sakuya still being acknowledged as an official (if minor) kami as opposed to a just an old and powerful Kodama) the orange haired child had understood everything she said with the fluency expected of a child speaking their mother tongue. To see such a promising child in such despair broke the old kami’s heart.

“ _Little one,_ ” Shiranui questioned softly to the boy as she padded out from the undergrowth. “ _Little one, what has happened? Why do you cry so?”_

The boy hiccupped, stopping the mournful crying and flailing long enough to sit up and look at the white wolf with mud smeared face and red rimmed eyes. He stared incomprehensively at the wolf and sniffled for a moment, causing Shiranui to worry that his faith had shattered to the point that he could no longer see or hear her as she was, before finally responding. “She’s dead,” he said, hiccupping and swiping his mud smeared hand at his dripping nose. “She’s dead and it’s all my fault. I killed her. I-I.” The boy’s voice stuttered as he began to cry again. Shiranui sniffed and placed her paw on the boy’s forehead decisively, orange hair falling over white fur, before he lost himself to grief again.

“ _Speak clearly young one,”_ Shiranui commanded, her dark eyes boring deep into the child’s lighter ones. “ _And do not speak falsely, for I can scent the truth of a situation beyond what humans can perceive.”_

The boy sniffled again, daunted but unafraid as he looked up into the kami’s eyes. “It had been raining for a few days,” he started and Shiranui inclined her head in acknowledgement, it had only been safe to forcefully clear the skies completely without meteorological backlash yesterday evening and so made sure that the skies were clear upon the sun’s dawning. “The river was starting to run over the banks and I saw a girl overlooking the river like she was going to jump in it. And I had vowed to myself that I was going to protect everyone I could and so I couldn’t let her jump in and get hurt so I ran to her to tell her to stop. She was surprised that I could see her, so I thought she might be a spirit of some sort but before I could say anything else, Mom was yelling at me. I don’t remember what happened next but I was suddenly waking up and, and-” The boy stopped again, making a sound between a choke and a keen as he started to curl in on himself.

“ _None of that now,”_ Shiranui scolded gently but firmly, nosing the young one’s chin as she repositioned herself to curl around boy to offer comfort. The boy leaned into soft fur almost immediately. “ _Deep breathes, and then continue where you were.”_

The boy snuffled some more but was breathing instead of sobbing, which was an improvement. After a few minutes, and a couple of false starts, the boy continued. “Momma was on top of me. Like if she pushed me out of the way of something, but I don’t remember what,” he said finally. “I didn’t want to think that she was dead, so I thought that if I got her home to Daddy that she would be okay because Daddy is a doctor and can fix people. So I carried her as far as I could but I couldn’t make it and I couldn’t leave her. No one seemed to notice us. Even Daddy when he came looking for us, almost passed us but he saw us when I called at him to help.”

The boy sniffled and buried his face into the fur of Shiranui’s shoulder. “He’s been broken ever since,” he whispered so softly, only ones with heightened hearing like Shiranui would have been able to hear it. “Everyone’s been broken ever since. It’s my fault. I killed her.”

“ _What did I say about speaking falsely?”_ the wolf reprimanded, poking the boy in the shoulder with her nose.

The boy turned and looked in her eye, face scrunched in confusion. “Not to?”

“ _Then why did you?”_ Shiranui questioned gently.

The boy looked at her with wide eyes. “But I didn’t!” he cried, aghast. “I wouldn’t lie to you, ever!”

“ _Perhaps you would have not ever meant to,”_ Shiranui agreed, “ _but it does not change that you_ _did speak falsely.”_ Looking at the child seriously, Shiranui continued. “ _I can tell when one has taken the life of another, purposely or not, maliciously or not. And_ you _have not markers of either of these.”_

“But,” the boy said incomprehensively, his golden brown eyes were wide and watery, “I was supposed to protect her. My _name_ is Ichigo, ‘the one who protects’! I was supposed to make sure nothing bad happened to her ever! And I failed! And now she is dead and gone forever!”

“ _Perhaps you hold some responsibility, but you hold no blame,”_ the kami said firmly. “ _You forget the roles of parent and child. A parent is to ensure, beyond all doubts, that the child makes it to adulthood. To do so at the cost of their life is a victory, not defeat! A bitter one, perhaps, but the fact that you still live is a testament to her strength! To say otherwise is to dishonor her memory. Do you wish to dishonor her?”_  The boy, Ichigo, frantically shook his head no. “ _Then accept that her death was her choice and her victory and live and defy all who would wish to do harm to you so when your body finally falls to the passage of time, your immortal soul will greet her in the after worlds and can proclaim ‘Look how long it has been since we have last met! See that your sacrifice was not in vain!’_

_“And know this, young protector,”_ Shiranui continued seriously. “ _From what you said of no one noticing you until you called out to your father, speaks that your mother must have once been a great miko to have casted a spell capable of hiding you from those who may wish you harm. Perhaps it had been a great many years since she had practiced her powers, many miko only practice before they marry, but in the times that our paths crossed, I could feel strong power tightly controlled in her body. Strong power I can feel echoing from you three fold. A power that many yokai and akuma would see as a tasty meal if they thought they could get away with it.”_

Ichigo leaned away and looked at the wolf goddess with complete disbelief. “Me? Powerful?” he asked softly.

“ _Yes,”_ Shiranui said plainly. “ _Perhaps it does not seem like much now for you have not been taught to use it. A large and bright bonfire in the night that is not so much a danger because of heat than because of its unpredictability rather than a forge that can even force hardest and sturdiest of metals into whatever the master smith desires.”_

The boy froze for the barest of moments before he scrambled back a short distance, bowing in a perfect kotow. “Please Great Spirit Shiranui, Divine Guardian and Spirit of Spring of Karakura town, previously the village of Kamiki, teach me how to use my powers!” the boy, Ichigo, beseeched. “I have little sisters I need to protect, and if Mom really had been using her magic to protect us, then I need to be able to do so too! Karin can see things almost as good as I can and Yuzu can notice things most can’t too, and…”

“ _Do you know what you are asking by asking for my guidance,”_ Shiranui questioned regally, her posture matching her tone as the conversation became deadly serious for any spirit. “ _There are many who would take advantage of such an open offer and take far more than what you would call fair.”_

Shiranui could smell the hesitation in the child, but he did not relent. “What would cost of such teaching be?” he asked stoically.

The wolf kami stood and walked around the prostrate boy, inspecting his resolve. And while it appeared that the boy was trying to follow her with his eyes, his only other movement was caused by his breathing. Finishing her inspection, Shiranui returned to stand in front of her prospective student. _“If I am to become your teacher in the magical arts that are sacred to me, you will be pledging yourself to become my creature; an agent of my will in the world, as modern and secular as it has become. You will aid me in my care of all those under my protection, whether they be human, spirit, or beast. Your demeanor will be a reflection of me and as such, as my agent, you and those you call family will have my protection._

_“There may be times where I will accept your protests to action and duties, if a good argument is presented. There will be others where I will not accept any protests and if you do not fulfill those actions or duties, you will be punished in any manner I see fit. However, I swear that your family will not bear the brunt of my ire if such events were to occur. As long as you follow and heed these guidelines, I also swear that I will always provide you with as much protection, skills, and power needed for you, personally, to defend those who you hold dear, unless such situation call for my direct interference. I will also do my best to prevent my tasks from interfering with your familial duties. If at any time you decide that the cost of my teaching and protection becomes too great a burden and you demand that I cease, I will do so without removing the knowledge of what I teach you from you; but do not mistake this as still having the ability to use them, as what I will teach will require having mine and others blessings._

_“Is this an acceptable offer?”_ Shiranui concluded, hoping that she covered everything necessary; it had been some centuries since she had actually had to construct a deal such as this, but it seemed more than fair from her prospective.

Ichigo was silent as he contemplated. “Will I be required to keep this secret from everyone?” he finally asked.

“ _No,_ ” Shiranui answered. “ _I would neither ask you to lie to your family nor others that you trust about your tutelage. But remember that in this age, being taught a magic art by an old, mostly forgotten kami would be met by skeptics and derision; so I ask that you keep our meetings discrete and keep silent on the specifics of my art for with all power, there are those who would abuse such knowledge.”_

The boy was silent another moment before pressing his forehead harder to the ground in aquesstion. “I accept the terms of your offer for my tutelage, Shiranui-sama,” the boy, her new vassal, Ichigo, said with appropriate regard.

“ _Good,”_ the old wolf rumbled, dropping her formality, gently pushing the child out of kowtow and into a normal sitting position. “ _While I will be bringing official contracts from Takamagahara for you to sign on a later date so you can get the appropriate clearances to areas I may send you later, as well as items restricted for unregistered human use due to increased likelihood of abuse or dangerous side effects to those untrained in spiritual arts (an effect of increased bureaucracy), I can still give you a general overview of what I will teach you that is specific to those of my sect now. While you know of my status as a regional protector kami and a kami of spring, that is not the only thing I am the kami of, especially with the theological collapse that I will go into at a later time. I am also a goddess of the brush, keeper of the Celestial brush techniques that were born when writing and art was more a tool of magic than of general understanding like it is today. For that reason, the first thing you are going to learn is the original means your ancestors prepared the tools needed to do any sort of brush work. First….”_

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yomi-final boss in Okami, also the realm of darkness and demons. Now more depicted as the western idea of hell.  
> Yatagarasu- "eight span crow", the giant, three legged crow that works as Amaterasu's messenger.  
> Yuurei- angry ghost. technically all earth bound ghosts like Plus could count as they did not pass on right away, but enough of the different types could correlate to Hollow, Gillian, Adjundus, and Vasto lord that I'm using this word as what the original Japanese term for Hollow to have been.  
> Yokai- a spirit of Nature or supernatural entitie that is neither "good" or "evil". In this story they are like the difference between the spiritually aware humans and Shinigami when it comes to the animal kind.  
> Akuma- evil spirits that are not necisarrily Hollows or Yokai, demons. in this story, some of the Espada's evilness would make them qualified to be counted among such, as would Naraku would in InuYasha and the Ninetails and Orochi in Okami  
> Takamagahara- heavenly plain that the gods reside.


	2. First Moon Rise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Guardians of Life and Death meet and stand up to that which would devour humanity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I used a lot of Chapter 1 of the bleach manga for accuracy and quotes when relevant. I won't necessarily do so after this chapter.  
> I'm also using a lot of Japanese terms because after having my document program insist that the English words were incorrect, I figured I might as well use the Japanese terms if it was going to fuss, though I might have gotten some things crisscrossed. If you think another term might be better, let me know and I'll change it if I agree. Definitions at the bottom. I don't think all the chapters will be this long.

 

Chapter one: First Moon Rise

 

Kurosaki Ichigo was not normal; a statement of fact.

He had stopped believing himself normal long before the one to buffer him from the derision of those who looked down upon the different was murdered that rainy day almost six years before. And while Kurosaki Masaki’s death meant that there was no longer anyone left to try and mend the bridge, or perhaps, more accurately, be the bridge, between his family’s innate abnormalities and the rest of the world, Ichigo refused to let that prevent his sisters from having the opportunity to have that choice of being seen as acceptably normal. Even if it meant that he gave that choice for himself up to insure it. After all, it was easy to for the two girls to seem normal with their father’s wild and outlandish behavior and Ichigo’s own attention grabbing reputation.

Ichigo’s reputation was as wild and varied as the number of people he encountered on a day to day basis, though there were a few common themes. The first was that Ichigo was a delinquent; with his orange colored hair (which was completely natural, no matter what anyone said), his rebellious and lackadaisical approach to his school classes when he bothered to attend, and his tendency to run into situations that led to him needing to give someone a physical (and often painful) correction. The second was that the high school student was a moody genius; Ichigo always got good grades on tests and homework regardless of his attendance, and with full-proof means of making sure he didn’t cheat proving his natural abilities beyond a shadow of a doubt, combined with his national (and, if his agent was right, growing international) renowned as a professional artist making teachers and students believe that the orange haired teen’s behavior was a reflection of the combination of his desire to create art and periods of being inspiration less. Thirdly, that Ichigo was god sent to the aid of the homicide and other law enforcement divisions; he was considered such to the (new) Super Intendant of the Karakura police and the town’s prosecution office do to using his gifts to learn where to look for evidence and can do so without tainting evidence or procedure (after some early misstarts) while not drawing publicity away from those who were actually hired to do so.

 On a relative note, the priests knew Ichigo was god sent and while some happily aided him as it meant they did not need to be the ones dealing with yokai upset by urban expansion, others thought he was trying to usurp their ‘greater authority’ and blamed any actions of the yokai on him. However, this sort of response only made the yokai (who looked at Ichigo’s status of Celestial Envoy as Old West films saw Sheriffs as ‘the Law’) more resentful of the priests turning the situation into an infinite loop when Ichigo would have need to get involved to pacify the creatures.

However, despite his varied reputation, there was one thing about Ichigo that he doubt would ever change about him. The orange haired teenager could see and interact with spirits. That should have been enough of an explanation as for why his foot ended up in the first goon’s face for no discernible reason. Unfortunately, his reputation for spirits didn’t always precede him.

“What the…!?” one of the goons stuttered as they looked at the lanky, orange haired teen. Ichigo scowled at the dumb looks on the oblivious faces as he made himself look as bored as he could while getting into a ready stance. Honestly, people as far as Kyushu and the Ryukyu islands could recognize him from the ‘Tanuki Rights War’ over five years ago. Granted, a lot of those people knew or were involved in that movement….

“You come here, stomp Lil’ Yama in the face, and order us about like we was dogs?!” the goon continued, Ichigo wincing at the bad grammar. “You crazy, punk? Gotta death wish? Speak!” Ichigo kept his silence but slid his eyes in the direction of the little girl’s spirit, giving them clues to figure it out. However, it seemed like it was going to have to be done the blunt way as the same punk got himself into a really sloppy fighting stance and charged.

“Say something, you-” the man (if he could be called that) cut off as Ichigo’s other foot slammed into the grunt’s face, years of martial arts allowing him to easily keep his balance despite the unorthodox stance he was using; hands in his pockets, messenger bag slung across his shoulders, his divine calligraphy case and scroll tied to his belt, and a stone and wood rosary chain looped around his right arm and shoulders.

Ichigo huffed disinterest over the second goon as the rest of the goons stammered at each other, easily holding himself in a crane stance. At least until he heard the goons call him a ‘blood-thirsty berry head’ and other emotive based derogatory terms; then he growled with temper and slammed his foot on the second goon. “Shut up!” Ichigo barked, leveling a glare at the morons, making them shrink in on themselves with a squeak.

“All of you chumps, look at that!!” Ichigo yelled, pointing at the vase of flowers that was knocked over. “Question one! What’s that!?”

Pointing at the scruffy goon with the piercings, Ichigo continued, “You, smelly looking dude! You tell me!”

The goon, now labeled Smelly, stammered for a moment before responding. “Umm… an offering for some dead kid?” Smelly answered, giving him a look as though he thought Ichigo was a moron. Ichigo repressed a growl as he moved.

“Look at the brain on Smelly!” Ichigo congratulated as he slammed a crescent kick into Smelly, causing the other two goons to jump back further before checking on Smelly.

“Question two,” Ichigo continued with a deliberately calmer tone as he leveled a hard look at the last two standing. “Why is that vase lying on its side?”

“Dat’s ‘cuz,” one of the last two goons with some sort of floral print shirt finally began, “we knocked over with our skateboards?”

“Is that so?” Ichigo asked rhetorically. Inhaling a deep breath, Ichigo gathered his reiryoku and blanketed the area with reiki, making the young girl’s spirit visible to mundane eyes. Leveling a maniac grin at the goons, Ichigo delivered his finisher as he jerked his thumb back at the girl, “Then you better apologize to her, hadn’t you?”

The goons screamed and began to babble apologies while quickly grabbing their friends and retreating with speeds they probably were not used to reaching without their skateboards. Ichigo decided that it would be needlessly cruel to point out the fact that they left their skateboards behind, but at least they had the decency to care for their friends lives above their possessions. Glancing at the girl who was blinking with confusion at how the goons could suddenly see her, Ichigo sighed as he began the arduous task of gather his reiatsu and reabsorbing the reiki he released into the air that was making the girl’s reishi visible.

“Sorry about that,” Ichigo apologized honestly, scratching the back of his head with one hand while righting the flowers and the vase with the other. “I usually have a better hold on my temper than that. It’s bad manners to do that without permission.”

“That’s alright, I did ask you to help,” the ghost said easily as Ichigo released the scroll and calligraphy set from his belt and knelt in front of the vase. “What are you doing?” the girl asked curiously.

“Fixing your flowers,” Ichigo answered absently as he opened his calligraphy case that he had hand carved and lacquered from the branches of one of Sakuya-hime’s sacred tree that she had happily donated to her oldest friend’s promising young pupil and bound with some rare, reiki enriched stingray leather his pen-pal, Chihiro Ogino, was able to get from Ryūgū-jō on his behalf as payment for service rendered to the dragon court for the reestablishment of the Kohaku River (and now knew better than to go underground with Shiranui-sama when rocks need to be broken).

Inside his case, Ichigo kept a fair assortment of items. Brushes of various sizes made with their traditional materials of animal hair and bamboo and bound in a pale bamboo shitajiki with the linked fudeoki and sumioki used as ties, a few rolled up sheaves of paper to make ofuda and omamori with some general ones already made for emergencies in a separate roll next to the first, his delicately carved slate suzuri which had been a gift from the Tama Hills’ Tanuki clans enchanted to never break, his self-made ginkō-in (as the only personal, official seal he currently might need at any time that wasn’t the family’s, he kept it on himself) and his self-made gagō-in (slightly larger than standard size, but reasonable as an artist signature) were in their secure loops side by side, a simple brass bunchin, a small and water tight porcelain suiteki, a small case of red seal paste, a cleaning cloth, and three black sumi sticks. Of course, to Ichigo’s eyes, only one of them was pure black.

As the devoted student, follower, and Celestial Envoy of Shiranui-sama (and indirectly, the Celestial Envoy of Takamagahara as a whole, though most of the gods and spirits that Ichigo has met that knew how that worked did not tell him how that happened), brush art was where the god’s power laid. This necessitated Ichigo having three sticks of sumi. The first was plain black with only as much reiki imbued in it as any master ink maker from thirty to fifty years before would have put into it for everyday use, used by Ichigo for mundane brush work such as painting or other decorative arts. The second sumi was one that Ichigo himself had made; pouring his reiatsu into the materials each step of the way, making the stick in any spiritually aware person’s eyes radiate a midnight to dawn blue glow of reiki. While it did not have the same quality of older sticks, his self-made sumi gave any ofuda and omamori or any other inscribing or brush based spell work a powerful boost. Despite the powerful quality of his own ink, Ichigo grabbed the last stick of sumi in his case as he pulled the items needed for his spell; the one that glowed gold to the teen’s eyes.

Ichigo knew that Shiranui-sama gave Ichigo many allowances and aids to use her techniques to the fullest that a human could. The special translucent scroll made from Takamagahara washi and sakaki and stingray leather bindings that Ichigo used as the medium for the Tenraifude-ryū was the school’s equivalent of over powered training wheels. The brush he took out of a hidden compartment made of dragon ivory and Shiranui-sama’s own fur was strong enough to survive any overcharging of spells and was of a greater quality than any master brush maker could hope to make as it was a gift from Shiranui-sama herself. And the sumi that glowed gold was one of Shiranui-sama’s own; given to her student whose own reiatsu could only make a small flower bloom if he burned through the whole of his reiryoku to do so.

If Ichigo had just been her student learning the art, that would have been a limitation that would have been worked on but not worried over; Shiranui-sama always told him when he got frustrated over his inability to use all forms of the Tenraifude equally was that Ichigo was always more a samurai than a kannushi, lacking that twist of power an exceedingly few mortal creatures had to _create_ from pure will. However, as one of the duties of the Celestial Envoy was to preform minor miracles to show the might of their god and associated religion, Shiranui-sama gifted him the sumi she had made while teaching him how to make sumi to the Tenraifude-ryū’s specifications. Ichigo hoped that by the time he ground the whole of the sumi to ink that he would no longer have need to use his god’s power to make flowers bloom at a stroke of the brush.

As it was, Ichigo only needed to ground out a small amount of the sumi onto the land of his suzuri as a more watery ink was all that was needed for this simple task. Mixing the ink expertly with one hand, Ichigo braced the scroll on his left knee so he could view the vase and flowers through it. First, a stroke to mend the chips and cracks in the vase. Next, a swirl to collect and return the water spilled from the vase when it was knocked over and return it to where it was meant to be. And finish with a bloom stroke.

Holding the divine instrument between his teeth by its red and white tassel, Ichigo rolled up the scroll and returned it to its casing as a gold based rainbow twined with midnight to dawn blue reiatsu tore itself from the other side of the washi and twirled around the daisies, restoring them to how they had been just after they had been cut. Unable to stop the swell of pride in his work, Ichigo let his face fall into a small smile as he used the last of the prepared ink to inscribe a small protective ward on the vase.

“Wow!” the little girl’s ghost gasped. “I didn’t know you could do that!”

“Most people who know of this technique are put off by the needing to get blessings from thirteen different gods,” Ichigo confided as he wiped the extra ink from the brush tip and returned the brush to its compartment. “Most don’t stick around long enough to learn that because only Shiranui-sama of the thirteen gods of the different techniques was also a regional protector god and therefore had a secondary group of worshipers, she ended up absorbing all of the other gods’ powers when they faded over a thousand years ago. Which suits Shiranui-sama just fine.”

“Shiranui-sama?” the girl asked rhetorically as the teen finished wiping the ink residue from the suzuri and replaced the rest of his tools. “Isn’t that the wolf god in the mountains?”

“Yep.”

“Didn’t Shiranui-sama do something for the Tanuki to the south?” she questioned. “I remember being little and seeing a large white dog creature with red markings on the T.V., but mom and dad said that it was just a white dog. Except after all the weird stuff ended a poster with the same dog with the same markings I saw showed up on a poster at the entrance sign once the preservation park was established saying thank you.”

“Ah,” Ichigo hesitated with embarrassment. “She was mostly there making sure I didn’t blow anything up that wasn’t supposed to since that was the first major thing I was ever asked to do. I’m her mortal representative, so these sorts of things are something that I’m supposed to be doing. And on that note, with so much of Shiranui-sama’s power around that vase, it should keep any malevolent spirit away from you tonight as long as you stick close. I’ll come back tomorrow with news of how your parents are doing and a slip that should get you safely to the afterlife. Does that sound good to you?”

The ghost beamed at her savior. “Yes, thank you so much!” she said gratefully.

“You take care,” Ichigo said with a wave as he began back towards his home. “And pass on if you feel like you can without me. There is a whole other life beyond this one waiting for you.”

Thankfully, the rest of the walk home was largely uneventful; Ichigo only subtly acknowledging the various yokai that were either invisible to the mundane eye or were indiscernible from their mundane counterparts who called out to him in greeting with means most humans could not hear or understand. Thankfully, the yokai of this area did not expect more than this unless they were requesting something, which Ichigo was not in the mood for. Despite the protection he gave the ghost, Ichigo still had a bad feeling about this night. If only he could figure out what was bothering him.

Sighing with slight relief as he reached the front of the clinic that served as his family’s home, Ichigo entered. “Tadaima,” the teen said in a manner that showed he was only saying so out of rout. And ducked under the hook kick his father aimed at him from behind the door.

“You’re late!” his father, Kurosaki Isshin proclaimed, two seconds before Ichigo stood with his right arm catching the leg that had not been aimed at his head while his left arm caught the other against his neck and gently tossed the older man further into the house before closing the door with his hip. Well, relatively gently.

“Sorry,” Ichigo said honestly, slipping off his outdoor shoes and dropping his bag and calligraphy tools, gently, by the stairs. “I forcibly made it so some jerks that were disturbing the spirit of a little girl, who was waiting to pass on till after she knew how her parents were coping with her death, see her to scare them off. I wanted to make sure she had some protection in case I attracted something unsavory towards her before I could find out how they were doing.”

“Outside the wards?” Karin stated more than asked.

“Yeah,” Ichigo sighed as he dropped himself in the empty chair next to Karin, causing her raise an eyebrow at him as he usually sat across from her, though he could not bring himself to do so at the moment.

The wards were a set of wooden ofuda carved from blessed sakaki wood and then inked in with his reiki infused ink with inserts on the back of the ofuda to fit two omamori designed to both ward away those with ill-intent (including malevolent spirits) and dampen the feel of reiryoku and reiatsu of those inside the wards so Ichigo and his family did not attract yūrie, or hollows as Ishida-kun (a classmate of his that has a family history of spirits that Ichigo was making quick friends with since they met at the beginning of the school year) says they are more often called, and then have them attack everyone that lived just outside the wards. He also had them in place around the schools and the local hospital, so he did not have to worry about his family where ever they were. The first ones were put up by Shiranui-sama after Ichigo became her student, but last year the wolf god declared that Ichigo’s ward work was powerful enough to rely on his own. After over a year with no trouble from them, Ichigo was both relieved and proud at the achievement as it meant he was keeping his promise to both learn how and use what he learned to protect his family.

The down side of the wards was that if the ghost of someone who did not have strong ties to the area in either life or death  entered, they ended up getting shocked which resulted in the ghost having a bad reaction. Usually a sudden burst of chain corrosion, but there was that one time where there was an instant hollowfication. In any event, it was something Ichigo and his family tried to prevent from happening by not inviting trouble and taking care of all ghost problems before coming home. This was why the eldest Kurosaki was not making as big of a deal about his only son arriving home later than usual like he would under any other circumstance. In fact, Isshin seemed to be giving his son an unusually serious look as he took the empty seat to Ichigo’s left.

“Making a ghost visible seems a little extreme,” Isshin stated pointedly.

“I know, I agree,” Ichigo sighed as he passed the serving bowl to his father as Yuzu finally sat down, her back to the kitchen. “But there has been an increase in activity of the ghosts in Karakura that seems completely disproportional to recent deaths in the area. On top of that, ever since this morning I’ve been on edge and I can’t figure out why.”

“Speaking of an increased activity of ghosts,” Yuzu began tentatively, pointing over Ichigo’s shoulder, “you’ve got another one.”

Ichigo twitched and turned to look. A cubical drone, _great_. “Do you even have a reason for staying here?” Ichigo hissed.

The ghost’s expression did not change as it floated back a foot. “I’m scared,” it finally said. Ichigo groaned, cradling his head in his hands. Karin sniggered.

“Hey,” Isshin whined. “Stop rubbing in the fact that you can see ghosts and I can’t.”

“At least you can tell when you’re near a yokai now,” Yuzu said comfortingly. That was one of the few things that was a genuine side effect. Ichigo had thought that when Yuzu and Karin’s ability to perceive ghosts and yokai began to sharpen relatively quickly after he started learning from Shiranui-sama that the wolf god was actively affecting his siblings. This led to him confronting the kami about it as the responsible brother in him was uncertain about the balance of burdening his sisters with the responsibility accompanied with that level of power against the ability to see all the things they might need to run from. The goddess did not take offence at the accusation, though she did firmly correct his assertion as that it was a natural human response to being in constant exposer to powerful spirit energy; almost as much as a factor as genetic family history. This was why families who lived near sacred groves or other holy sites often gained spiritual abilities regardless of prior family back ground.

 “While knowing which ones will understand me if I yell at them for getting into the garbage is useful,” Isshin agreed. “I still feel left out that all my children can do something I can’t. Being able to see ghosts is so cool.”

“Trust me, it is not that great,” Ichigo grumble as picked up is soup bowl and took a long swallow. Turning back to the ghost, he leveled a hard glare. “You, stay against the wall until we finish dinner and then I’ll make you a talisman to get you safely to after world, got it?” The ghost nodded frantically. “Good.”

Turning back to his dinner, Ichigo and the Kurosaki family ate as they discussed current news at school; Ichigo’s calligraphy club (which had an absurd number of girls in it _and_ Ichigo somehow ended up as Secretary despite not trying for any position on top of it) were arguing about entering one of those new performance calligraphy competitions, Karin’s soccer team was getting ready for an upcoming tournament, and Yuzu’s acceptance to begin training to become a Miko at the large shrine in Naruki city during the summer. Ichigo would have preferred her being trained at the Higurashi shrine despite the long distance as he trusted the priestess there far greater than any other in the Western Tokyo area, but knew that if Yuzu completed her training there, it would lead to her becoming at least as strong as he was spiritually and gain all the responsibilities that came with the power of being a Higurashi miko. There really only needed to be one Higurashi Kagome level miko in the world at a time.

Isshin was starting a story about one of the intern nurses the local hospital shuffles through as a part of their training, jumping around with wild expressions and movements for emphasis, when Ichigo heard someone on the stairs and stilled. “I don’t understand,” a strange female’s voice muttered to herself. “I swore I felt it come this way.” Ichigo tensed and looked over.

First thing he noticed was that the spirit was short; and it was a spirit, as only a spirit could have come in from upstairs. Second was dark hair and dark clothing. Third, and most important, was the katana at her side. Relaxing slightly, though not lowering his guard completely despite the Shinigami’s confused look, Ichigo jerked his finger at the ghost floating against the wall. “Loose something, Shinigami-san?” Ichigo drawled. Karin and Yuzu stared at him before turning to look in the direction he was glaring at, though only Karin’s squinting eyes were actually focusing on her. Isshin, on the other hand, clammed up like flipping a switch and returned to his seat. Ichigo wondered if he knew more details about Shinigami in reality than he did, being a close friend with Ishida-kun’s father despite Ishida and Ichigo having only met that year.

The Shinigami in question started at being noticed and addressed. With a faint flush to her cheeks, the Shinigami drew her Zanpakutō and quickly stamped the seal on the pommel of her blade against the ghost’s forehead.

“No,” the cubical drone whined, as Ichigo rolled his eyes and finished the last bit of his dinner, internally frowning at how serious his father was looking despite his attempt at behaving in a manner most would find normal. “I don’t want to go to hell.”

“Do not worry,” the Shinigami said in what was probably supposed to be a soothing tone. “Your soul is bound for the Soul Society, a far more peaceful place than Hell.”

“Is there really something there, Ichi-nī?” Yuzu asked, looking at were the ghost had been.

“Something is definitely there,” Karin said. “Though all I see is a blur.”

“That’s odd-”

“Does the Shinigami have a reason for being here?” Isshin asked with forced cheer, his eyes resolutely ahead of him in approximation of where the Shinigami should be despite his inability to actually see, or even sense, spirits to any significant degree. “Or was it just here for your newest spirit pal?”

Before Ichigo could say anything in response, the Shinigami broke into the conversation. “You can see me?” the Shinigami gaped with surprise. “Really see me?”

“Yeah, I can see you fine,” Ichigo answered. “The local Kami of Protection, Shiranui-sama, has been active this past decade so a lot of us in the area can at least detect spirits. Are you new to this area?”

“Yes,” the Shinigami answered though she still seemed bewildered. “I just started this past week. How could you tell?”

“Just a week?” Ichigo repeated for the benefit of his family who obviously could not follow very well if at all. “That explains it. Most end up running into one of the local yokai and get told the local peculiarities with in the month but if it hasn’t even been a full week that you’ve been assigned here, then it would explain why you don’t know.”

“Know what?” the Shinigami asked, gathering her wits.

“That I’m the student of Shiranui-sama and Celestial Envoy of Takamagahara when called on,” Ichigo said with a smirk, leaning back in his chair. “As such, areas that I frequent such as here, my school, and a couple other areas in town are warded against malevolent spirits and suppress our signatures to lessen the chance of attracting them. And just because you are a Shinigami and probably have a century more experience-”

“You said that your wards have a reiatsu sensing suppression function?” the Shinigami interrupted urgently.

Ichigo leveled a look at the wide eyed Shinigami. “Yes, among other things,” Ichigo repeated calmly. “Just because I am concerned with the living and you with the dead does not mean I want to have a spiritual equivalent of a neon sign hanging above my-”

“When were they last updated?” the Shinigami interrupted again.

Ichigo gritted his teeth, but refrained from antagonizing the one with the sword. “This past spring just before the semester started at the dawn of the beginning of the flower season, when Shiranui-sama’s power peaks,” he answered, losing his temper. “Are you going tell me what the hell you’re-”

“I was following a Hollow until it got near here and its signature vanished,” the Shinigami answered, though she seemed distracted trying to sense through the wards. “It was too different to how they normally disappear for me to not investigate. Are you sure they are still fully functional?”

Ichigo was going to scoff and tell the Shinigami that of course he was sure, but there was something that made himself stop. He had been having a bad feeling since he woke up that persisted throughout the day. A ghost that didn’t look like it was from the area seemed to have followed him home without problem. And a Shinigami that seemed relatively young but honestly eager to do the sort of duty that they were founded on, if he had to guess, saying that a Hollow vanished from her senses in the middle of his neighborhood. Inhaling deeply, Ichigo reached out with his reiatsu to look through the weaves of the wards of his making….

…And felt the suffocating feel of hunger and madness that could be nothing else than a Hollow just beyond….

Snapping his eyes back open, Ichigo began to move even though he could feel his blood leave his face as the evil feeling seemed to flare and focus with malevolent intent. “Dad, everyone, get down,” Ichigo cried as he forced Karin back and grabbed the edge of the table. Isshin (with speed Ichigo did not know his father had in spite of his ability to land his “attacks” on his son, who had experience dodging yokai, when he actually was trying) dove from his chair, clearing the edge of the table before pivoting and snatching Yuzu from her own chair and spun to grab Karin who was stationary behind Ichigo in surprise; all in the precious few seconds before the wall behind where he was sitting burst through with the roar of the Hollow.

With a shout, Ichigo tilted the table and kicked it into the buck-tooth face of the Hollow, jumping clear of the grabbing hand, heedless of the shattering tableware. Reacting quickly now that her target was in front of her, the Shinigami deftly leapt forward and swung her sword at the Hollow’s face. It was in vain, though, as the Hollow had brought up its other arm when it reeled backwards from being struck by the table and blocked the strike, knocking the Shinigami back into the Kurosaki home.

Shoving panic away, Ichigo unwound the long chain of stone and wood beads on ōgumo silk rope from around him and began to twirl the chain like a kusari-fundo with the weight of the jade magatama at the end allowing the teen the ability to aim. The beads were made more for catching and calming overactive yokai than for dealing with angry or otherwise dark spirits, but they did have some ability to purify so they should be harmful to the Hollow. Knowing that he did not have the tools to land a critical hit, Ichigo was determined to at least give the Shinigami the shot she needed to land the killing blow. “I have pre-made ofuda in my calligraphy case,” he said to his family behind him as poured his reiatsu into the beads and silk rope, making them give a blue glow.

“Right!” Yuzu said quickly. Ichigo could hear her lunge back towards his supplies but he stopped paying attention when the Hollow turned to follow her movement behind him and he threw the chain, the magatama striking through the eye hole causing the Hollow to back up with a pained cry, both hands coming up to cover its face. Reeling in his beads as he moved, Ichigo ducked through the hole in the wall and began to pour reiatsu through the beads again. With the clear street now at his back and not his mostly defenseless family, Ichigo threw the bead chain again, this time hitting the Hollow’s flank. The young Celestial Envoy could not help but give a vicious grin at sizzling sound that came from the contact.

“Ye lord! Mask of blood and flesh, all creation, flutter of wings, ye who bears the name of Man!” the Shinigami chanted from within the Kurosaki home. “Inferno and pandemonium, the sea barrier surges, march on to the south! Hado #31: Shakkahō!” A red fire condensed and shot from her hand and struck the Hollow in the face, causing it stagger further from the Kurosaki home. The Shinigami used this to join Ichigo on the street, leveling her blade at the monster, making sure to keep clear of the spinning beads.

“What are its power levels like?” the Shinigami asked. “I still cannot sense it through your wards.”

Ichigo focused on the enemy’s energy signature. “I cannot sense the extent of its power,” Ichigo answered honestly as the smoke from the spell faded and revealed the cracked mask. “However, its reiatsu is fluctuating similarly to some yokai with a high healing factor.” This became evident as its mask mended itself before their eyes.

“A Menos? Here?” the Shinigami asked bleakly. “Twelfth is supposed to tell us about these things.”

“Good thing you’re not alone then,” Ichigo said, ducking left away from the Hollow’s (Menos?) attack as the Shinigami ducked right, whipping the beads out and connected with its side again. The Hollow roared as its recoil brought it into the Shinigami’s blade as she spun and dodged to stand next to Ichigo again.

“Hassha!” Karin shouted from above. A second later a flash slammed into the recovering Hollow’s face. Scowling, Ichigo looked up to see that his younger sister had climbed up to the roof and had a stack of ofuda at her feet. Before he could come up with a way to express his annoyance (he could feel terror later), Yuzu called to him from the hole in the wall.

“Ichigo, I have them!” Yuzu shouted, shifting her gaze between the smoking creature and her brother. Gritting his teeth, Ichigo lashed out with the beads again before leaping back towards Yuzu. Running back the rest of the way, the orange haired youth snatched the ofuda as the Shinigami made an abortive slash at the hollow as Karin fired another purifying ofuda blast.

“Ichigo, will it run from these?” Isshin asked quickly as he ran towards his eldest, the wooden ofuda usually in the kamidana that served more as prayer receptors rather than offensive or defensive use for the house shrine (Shiranui-sama) and the clinic’s (Amaterasu-Ō-Mi-Kami), but….

“If Yuzu channels her reiatsu through them and prays, they should glow with the kami’s power,” Ichigo answered. “We might have to get new ones afterwards, though.” The road crunched as the Hollow missed the nimble Shinigami, bringing Ichigo’s attention back to the fight. Tucking the paper ofuda into his pocket, Ichigo charged the beads again. “Karin! Get back down here and help Yuzu! We don’t need a broken roof on top of everything!”

“Okay!”

The Hollow lunged at the Shinigami and Ichigo leapt forward, wrapping beads around its arm, the magatama locking it in place as the teen worked to bodily restrain it as his sister got clear of the roof. The Hollow roared in fury and pain, swiped at the beads and flinched back when the glowing beads burned its hand. Snarling even more, the Hollow lunged at Ichigo. Ichigo tossed himself through the Hollow’s open legs, hoping to force the Hollow to smash face first into the ground where it would be in easy stabbing range of the Shinigami. Unfortunately, it did not work as well as he had hoped, as the Hollow landed a scratch on his right arm that was supporting the beads, making his reiatsu waiver and  his chain loose power and go limp.

‘No, it was worse than that,’ Ichigo thought as he quickly rolled further away from the Hollow as it attempted to stomp him, tucking his right arm to his chest, using his left hand to pick the correct ofuda by reiatsu sense and pulled it out swiftly, slapping it over his injury and activated it. ‘It has venom that hinders reiatsu flow entirely!’

Coiling his beads as the ofuda purged the venom from his body; Ichigo righted himself as he tried to think through this mess. It healed faster than they could deal damage. If the Shinigami had the power to counter it without causing more harm, she looked desperate and determined enough with her spell casting for Ichigo to believe that she would have done so by now. Ichigo had the power to defeat it, but not the time. The wards were tampered with in a way that made it impossible for the Shinigami to be sense the monster. Would he have even had checked the wards if the Shinigami had not come looking? Was this deliberate?

Forcing as much reiatsu into the beads as he could, Ichigo charged at the Hollow; springing off the monster’s back with a flip and slamming them down on the Hollow’s mask with a loud crack, causing the Hollow to shriek and stumble back as the mask cracked and smoked. But the damage was already done. The Shinigami stumbled up against a wall, one hand on her bleeding shoulder, the other barely keeping a grip on her blade. “Damn it,” the Shinigami hissed as she clenched her eye shut.

“Shinigami-san,” Ichigo asked worriedly as twin glows of gold emerged from within the hole in his house, causing the Hollow stumble away from his family in pain as its mask continued to heal and the comforting feel of his kami’s power filled the air, “are you alright?”

“While my life is not in any immediate danger,” the Shinigami said, her voice painted with pain, “I fear that I am too badly injured to continue fighting.”

Watching as the monster stood and turned back towards the Shinigami and Celestial Envoy, fully healed, Ichigo bleakly addressed the Shinigami, “Can you think of anything that would give us a chance of beating it?”

“Only one,” the Shinigami answered, adjusting the grip on her sword so that it was leveled in front of Ichigo. “You must become a Shinigami.”

Startled, the teen looked back at the Shinigami. “What?”

“I pierce you through the heart with my Zanpakutō,” the Shinigami explained. “By doing so, I have the ability to force some of my reiatsu directly into your soul, giving you the ability to take on a Shinigami’s power and abilities. The chance of success is low with failure tearing apart your soul entirely, and even if we succeed you may still end up dead. But you have shown that you have control over reiatsu, and probably have a lot of it still left even now, so perhaps it means that you have a better chance of survival.”

“Or perhaps and even lower one?” Ichigo asked rhetorically, gripping his beads tightly as he saw Karin, his idiot, _idiot,_ younger sister edge out of the house, glowing ofuda in hand making the Hollow back away from her. But now it was obviously deciding that getting burned by the holy power was an acceptable loss to get such a tasty treat. “Right then, let’s get started, Shinigami-san.”

“Ichigo?” the teen could hear Yuzu call to him, though he ignored her to keep his determination firm.

“My name is Kuchiki Rukia, not Shinigami,” the Shinigami, Rukia, corrected as they leveled her Zanpakutō over his heart.

“Kurosaki Ichigo,” he answered in kind. “May we both be able to meet again after this.”

“Ichigo?!”

They pushed the blade through his chest, and Ichigo had to clench his eyes at the second of pain before ice slid into his soul; numbing him with the chill of death even as it bridged and pulled power out from the depths of his soul and out into the air. With all the determination that he could muster, Ichigo compressed the energy further to himself, reinforcing power wrought clothing he could now feel draped over him. Realizing that he now held the swords hilt rather than the blade, Ichigo compressed his exposed energy even further, remembering the discussion between the Western Lord and his siblings two summers before about the correlation of energy compression and piercing damage of yokai and other spirit creatures, holding firm the image of a katana until the energy seemed to settle.

Snapping his eyes open, Ichigo zeroed in on the Hollow, ignoring the presence of his family beyond recognizing as needing to avoid hitting them the sword that seems to between the length of a standard katana and a ōdaichi (which was honestly more suited for his height than the standard size). Moving faster than he has ever had under his own power, Ichigo quickly wove through the obstacles his family made of themselves, ignoring his desire to curl around the comforting warmth of the activated ofuda, and slashed at the Hollow’s legs. The Hollow crashed heavily onto the ground with a cry. It cried out again as Ichigo quickly slashed through the arm that attempted to block his leap over the fallen form. Steadying his feet on the ground, Ichigo pivoted and slashed a horizontal line through the entirety of the Hollow’s head, defeating it once and for all.

Shaking with the desire to fall over, Ichigo pulled at the remains of his reiatsu, the image of a powerful warding circle and his neighborhood crossed over each other in his mind. Forcing the energy to his sword point, the new Shinigami slammed the sword into the ground, overwriting the old wards and saturating the air with shaped purifying energy. With his senses expanded as far as he could go, Ichigo could vaguely feel the souls of all the creatures with the barest slivers of true evil in their hearts suddenly run in the opposite direction. Ichigo might have laughed, but his sword had evaporated with the last of his energy and he landed on the ground; only cold left in his heart.

Shivering weakly, Ichigo heard the sounds of his family’s desperate cries, but could not make out any words in his state. He tried to move, but was quickly scooped into his father’s arms and firmly held there. Rather than feel smothered like he would have normally, the teen tried to burrow deeper into his father’s warmth; desperately trying to will that familiar warmth into him even as the Kurosaki patriarch’s warm hand practically throbbed as it rubbed small circles into his back where he would have been physically injured if the damage of spiritual weapon did not coil itself in his soul.

“Cold,” Ichigo finally managed to gasp before falling into darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yokai- nature and/or elemental spirits. sometimes believed to be different from kami only by either having worshipers or by occupation. Not usually out right evil, as some western religions such as Christianity would label them, but are known for conflicts with humans that result in a lot of damage and casualties.  
> Kyushu and Ryukyu islands- the southern large island and the smaller island chain to the south of Japan  
> Reiryoku- the potential energy of a person  
> Reiki- spirit energy with out intent that can collect upon a spirits reishi and make them visible in the living world. often accumulates naturally at shrines and other sacred sites. also the term for energy with out intent in an object. Used by Quincys to make weapons and do combat.  
> Reiatsu- energy released into the air that carries the intent or will of the one who releases it. the driving energy behind spell casting and other similar techniques  
> Reishi- spirit partials, what spirits and everything in Soul Society and Hueco Mundo. Used by Quincys to make weapons and do combat.  
> Ryuuguu-jou- the palace of the dragons at the bottom of the ocean. In this story, it is made of sea coral and sea glass and other objects that make it to the bottom of the ocean, has five wings which contains the throne room and a season each to accommodate all the different kinds of dragons, and its ruler has comparable authority over the world as the Japanese Emperor (who is considered the primary ambassador between dragon and human kind)  
> shitajiki- a mat of either felt or bamboo to prevent ink from bleeding through paper. usually used in calligraphy  
> fudeoki- calligraphy brush holder  
> sumioki- ink stick holder  
> ofuda- a talisman, predominately used by Shinto shrines as means to bring a connection of a kami into one's house, though they can take a more combative use when prepared as such  
> omamori- a charm, usually used to ward or balance energy around a person, though it can be used for other, defensive, purposes (see the protection charm that Isshin gives to Ichigo before Soul Society arc)  
> suzuri- the ink stone, where traditional ink is ground out and mixed. used in calligraphy and other traditional brush arts in the east  
> Tanuki- racoon-dogs native to east Asia, the yokai versions are capable of illusions and transformation  
> ginkō-in- a personal, official seal, used at a bank instead of a signature  
> gagō-in- a personal, unofficial seal, often used as an artist signature, often hold nicknames or pen names  
> bunchin- a type of paper weight used in calligraphy  
> suiteki- a water jar used in calligraphy  
> sumi- ink sticks, traditionally made of charcoal and either resin or animal glue. used in calligraphy  
> Takamagahara- the heavenly plain where the palace of the gods of Japan resides. considered eponymous of each other.  
> washi- Japanese traditionally blended paper, mostly used in Japanese decorative crafts that involve paper like calligraphy and origami  
> Tenraifude-ryuu- Celestial Brush techniques. made up term but i think it is more accurate to the translation than 筆調べ or the "investigators brush", even if that is how it is most often used.  
> kannushi- Shinto priest, i believe they are more specifically mage or healer types than other terms  
> kusari-fundo- a chain weapon with weights on two ends. best known for use by police during the Meiji era  
> ōgumo- means "the great weavers" usually a spider spirit, though may also refer to other thread making insect spirits  
> magatama- a type of bead that looks like a yin-yang symbol that is considered sacred in Japan, believed to have originated as a symbol of boar tusks which was the original reason as to why they were always paired  
> Hassha- firing, shot, discharge (I know most people use "kai", but I can't find a translation as to why so if someone can show me where this comes from, I'm sticking to what translates acceptably)  
> kamidana- house shrine for Shinto, I think a different one is used for Buddhist use


	3. Dawn of a New Moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The night is darkest on the first moon of the month, making it easier to remember other times of darkness than the fact that night will get brighter again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if it is a bit convoluted with Isshin's part. While I understand why in cannon he is mostly goofy, it is hard for me to write a character like that when I know he is an onion character even if he usually doesn't show it. I should get to explaining the Quincys in the next chapter. Sorry if the characters are OoC.  
> Also Fishbone D is not necessarily a Menos, Rukia makes the assumption because it has high speed regeneration. It looked like it regrew an arm in the manga, at least.

# Chapter 2: Dawn of a New Moon (暁新月)

 

 

                Kuchiki Rukia shook quietly against the wall as the odd family capable of seeing spirits like her rushed to their fallen member. Their cries of distress made guilt flash through her though she could not help but let an emotion closer to terror dominate her mind. After all, despite everything, even the family’s worry, the teenager was alive; if in shock and exhausted. And what a terrifying thing it was to know that something with that much power was completely and utterly _exhausted_.

                Rukia knew it was a risk, this whole borrowing power thing. It was best known to Rukia by the illegality of it rather than the process, but with her shoulder obviously cracked and the Hollow _right there_ , the unseated officer could not afford to worry about the legality of it especially with the horrifying thought of the hollow gaining the powers of this spiritually powerful family. But she could not understand what happened with her power. Rather than half of her power, the boy ended up sucking in all of it; Sode no Shirayuki gone from her mind with a yelp of surprise. At least Rukia could still feel her Zanpakutō connected to her, but the sword and spirit was as unreachable as the rest of her power.

                This did not even cover the whole of the oddity of what just happened. The boy’s power after absorbing Rukia’s Shinigami power leapt so high she could feel it through the warding. It felt small, relatively, but she knew that was a lie because she could not feel a _Menos_ class Hollow through the wards. This probably was symbolized in the boy’s shihakushō; in addition to what one would normally expect on a Shinigami, the boy had a white with red and black swirls kote with red ties with matching sune-ate with white and red wrappings on his thighs and arms just past the shoulders. The sword would not have surprised Rukia if it was his own; longer than the average katana in the gray area between a daito and a ōdaichi, but if he had taken Sode no Shirayuki in her entirety, he should have been using her. The sword he was using had some elements of her Zanpakutō in its appearance, but was ultimately _not._

                The fact that he remained in his body might not be anything of note, after all Rukia had never done this sort of thing before. And his skill in wielding the blade could easily be explained with training in the living world. But his speed could have easily have been a shunpo, and that power he released at the end that made even her, a Shinigami, feel like she got a sun burn from the sheer _purity_ of it was what teetered her at the edge of awe and complete terror. No human should be able to do that. No human _could_.

                Rukia flinched at the glare she received from the dark haired girl the boy, Ichigo (not Kaien, no matter how he acted, it couldn’t be Kaien, it was too soon for him to have been reincarnated by the time this child was born), had referred to as Karin as the father moved the shivering boy back through the broken wall. _It wasn’t her fault!_ She was doing her duty; she told him the risks, _why did everyone who cared for her die?_

                “Wow,” an unknown man said from behind her with exaggerated amazement. A quick turn showed him to be a blond with a green striped bucket hat with and a green based traditional style of clothing. He swung a cane that did not feel like a cane in one hand. “You never actually _feel_ anything from over here. I wonder what happened.” The man sighed and turned back the way he came almost negligently. “Doesn’t matter right now, I suppose. Their Calvary will be here in moments and the moment they hear that a Shinigami was involved, well, I wouldn’t want to be a Shinigami in an easy to reach place. Perhaps we could talk more at my shop? I have a number of items available for the stranded Shinigami to peruse through.”

                Rukia opened her mouth to protest, but knew that in her state surrounded by people who could see her and could do damage to a hollow (even if it was not lasting damage) was probably unsafe to be around until tempers cooled. Giving one last look at the damaged house, Rukia followed the odd man down the street.

                ‘Please live,’ Rukia prayed silently to herself. ‘I’m tired of not being strong enough to not kill the people who have gained my respect.’

* * *

 

                Isshin felt a numbness in his heart that he had not felt since the early days in the aftermath of Masaki’s death as he watched his only son shiver weakly with an unnatural cold under the extra covers on his bed, curled around the wooden ofuda that were still giving a golden glow of power visible to _his_ eyes without any other aid. Ryūken, who had arrived with his son not terribly long after Isshin got Ichigo bundled in bed and figured out that the ofuda calmed the unconscious teen, said that the ofuda were giving off energy that Ichigo was absorbing safely in a way that spoke of his latent Quincy abilities working in full. Or perhaps it was Ichigo’s kami acting remotely to keep its promise with the teen. Despite all of the odd things that occurred in his life, Isshin wasn’t sure he could handle this anymore.

The truly odd things started after his wife’s death and subsequent gaining protection from a creature he had only believed in prior because Masaki had gripped at him when they noticed their toddling first born petting what looked like a normal, if large, white dog, and hissed, ‘ _I have no idea what that is, but it’s not normal and very powerful.’_ Even after they researched the local lore on it and deemed it benign unless angered (and then only aggressive towards adults), Isshin did not trust the creature that he had only the barest of understanding of after having to live in the Living world for years. Not even after his son decided to throw his lot in with it.

 

_Isshin dashed through the forests surrounding the graveyard he just laid his wife’s soulless (eaten) remains, panic lodged in his throat as he searched for his eldest child. He could not lose them both. He wouldn’t be able to survive; his wife might have been the center of his world after he lost his powers and married her, but Ichigo was_ theirs, _he couldn’t lose them both without breaking to the point he would probably just hollowfy on the spot._

_As it was, he had to foist his daughters onto Urahara (who had not dared to skip out on this occasion even if Ryūken and Isshin had to stuff him into a proper, modern suit) as Ryūken was on the other side of the service with his parents who bore holes into the remains of the Kurosaki family with blame in their eyes. After all, was it not Isshin who gave Masaki that foolish idea of giving up the arts of the Quincy entirely? Who convinced Ryūken of the same? And then had the gall to keep the children away and not have them taught their ancestry and powers? Regardless of not having any Shinigami powers anymore, this was obviously a ploy of the Gotei 13 to finish off the rest of the Quincy._

_There was not a Hollow in the area, it would have been sensed by the Quincy or Urahara quickly, but that did not calm the former Captain of the tenth squad. Ichigo has had the look of horrified shock on his face since he was told that his mother was dead and never coming back that worried Isshin. Isshin had been too numb to act on it at the time, having to prepare a pointless funeral, and felt that it was a conversation that would be better had after the service. But Ichigo vanished in the middle of it, and no one noticed until Isshin turned to try and pull him to the side after it was over._

_Isshin knew he had to be the one to find him even if Urahara and the others could use high speed techniques (that was the only advantage the others had as the only thing that could be easily sensed in these woods were actively malicious things like Hollows, everything else was faded like in static), the one who Ichigo needed to be found by was his father. His eldest child needed to know that his father was still there for them even if this tragedy has only proven that promising to always be there was an empty one. Needed to know that he was still loved and wanted and apart of this family that would not survive without him._

_Isshin had checked the steep sides first, in case Ichigo was contemplating the value of “accidently” falling off them (one could only truly go over the side on accident if they used shunpo as the cliffs had defined edges between the tree line and the drop for anyone to see in time at normal speeds), and did not find anything. He then checked through the woods to the top of the mountain where the great Konohana tree, the natural wonder of a sakura tree that always had some blooms on it even in the winter, stood alone with a view of Mt. Fuji off in the far distance._

_There were no defined paths up this way; construction crews always seemed to suffer accidents trying to clear a way to the top and the old stone path was mostly overgrown and broken. It was not like you could not view it from a distance, its age giving it a size that allowed its branches to casually hang above the tree line that was hundreds of feet away and down the mountain. The tree itself laid in what looks like what might have been a crevice or depression when was first planted thousands of years before, but between the weather and its large roots (that were believed to run deep into the mountain) the sides were worn down leaving only flowers, small bushes, annual grasses, and moss to grow at the peak beside it (or on it). The sight was beautiful and awe inspiring. Most people hiked to the neighboring mountain to a lookout station to view the mighty tree with out the hard hike, but the Kurosaki family had hiked up to the tree every spring every year after Ichigo’s kindergarten teachers taken his class up at the end of the school year and they fell in love with the view._

_But even that long hike seemed in vain as the only living creatures on the mountain was the tree (which always felt more than just a tree, even to Isshin) and the small animals and insects that called the tree home. Isshin had circled the tree three times, calling fruitlessly for his son, climbing over and using the exposed roots as raised platforms to get a better view of the rest of the mountain with no result. Finally dropping himself on the top of ancient stone torī that roots had grown into it (practically fusing the two together) after hours of searching, the former Shinigami began to weep._

_“Please,” Isshin begged the empty air, unable to believe in much of anything that could be benevolent but desperate enough to want something that would listen anyways. “I just want my son. I’ve already lost Masaki. I can’t lose him too._

_“I know asking for the dead to return to life is foolish and pointless,” he continued. “But Ichigo is alive! He has to be alive! I love him; maybe I haven’t said it enough times this week after Masaki’s death, but its true! I just want him back! I won’t be sad anymore! I have him, and Karin, and Yuzu; the best gifts I could ever ask for, why would I say I need anything more? Oh, kami! Please! Please just let me find him! Please!”_

_He continued to weep incoherently for few minutes before a sudden wind nearly knocked him off the torī. Gripping onto the wood and stone tightly, Isshin let shock dry his eyes before being nearly knocked off a second time, some of the flower petals from the tree spinning in front of him. It took a third time of being struck by the wind for the former Shinigami to realize that the wind was not natural as the petals remained as they were in a small vortex of wind in front of him despite the strong force trying to remove him from the torī. Spooked, Isshin spoke aloud at a guess._

_“I don’t-” he stuttered. “Are you wind, or another force? I can’t see-”_

_Another wind gust blew, but rather than an answer, it felt more like an expression of exasperation. Seconds later, Isshin ducked his head instinctively as a small flock of sparrows grazed his hair with their wings. The birds flew in a circle at the entrance of the overgrown pathway but it took the unnatural wind kicking him off the torī (and it really did feel like someone’s shoe connected with his back) for him to realize what they wanted him to do._

_“Follow, you want me to follow?” Isshin asked aloud as it seemed to be working. The birds flew down the path a ways, still visible to the former Shinigami. Staggering into a run, Isshin began to follow the birds. “Thank you, thank you!”_

_Following the birds was not as hard as Isshin would have expected, but then normal birds would not have stopped to allow him to keep up. They followed the main path for a while before veering off onto a sub path that was largely unnoticeable from the main path do to overgrowth, not picking up again until a number of stumbles and crashes through undergrowth put him back on broken stones. The path led east, towards the undeveloped forests and mountains that supposedly held the original settlement for the area before a combination of drought, storm, and the illnesses those natural disasters caused led to the villagers to move to the area that would become Karakura and the surrounding settlements. Tradition said the land was taken by the kami and yokai to make up for something (the detail of what were lost in time) and, while Isshin normally laughed that it was just a description of the beauty of the woods that grew back without people cutting down trees to make farms or cities, the events of the day was making him doubt what he held as truth._

_But he has read the spirit tales, has heard all the reasons why a kami or yokai one has probably insulted would help. Isshin was a former Shinigami, a shinketsu, born to the Soul Society, he never honored spirits of the Living world. Heck, the closest they got to worshipping someone was the Reiō, and from what the literature said about him was that he was decidedly_ not _a god. Despite the lore involving the duties of the noble houses, unless the sōtaichō or the Kuchiki clan had information the Shiba clan did not, the gods or kami or however else they are called had nothing to do with Seireitei at all. Masaki, as a born Quincy, was familiar with the myths and things that appeared normal that suddenly hit critical mass of reiatsu and developed its own personality (usually they get identified as tsukumogami), but had not believed or honored kami or yokai, either. The one who seemed to know the most about them was Ichigo, and that was because he could talk to them._

_It was a talent that Masaki and Isshin had humored, thinking that the dog-that-wasn’t was an isolated incident (like that Komamura guy back before he had left Seireitei). A plus of an animal gaining Shinigami powers as opposed to undergoing hollowfication and, not being normal, remained in the living world in something like a gigai rather than in Seireitei. It was improbable, not impossible. Could probably be easily cleared up, if anyone got up the nerve to ask the sō-taichō about the wolf creature. With Ichigo being the child of a shinketsu Shinigami who lost his powers and has yet to go through any other part of the reincarnation cycle and a pure-blooded living Quincy (who may or may not also be a new soul), odd instances of unusual powers were to be expected. It was no longer funny when, in the past year, Ichigo revealed a rather heinous child abuse case because he overheard a nekomata plotting vendetta against the parents in the school yard for the child that was suffering had fed it when it had sprained its paw and could not hunt despite the fact it led to the child to get in trouble by doing so._

_It became downright serious when Yoruichi investigated, in cat form, and found herself almost completely outclassed in seconds when the cat creature ensnared the shape shifter with, what the former captain was told, a low level binding spell that hit like a level ninety bakudō because, as a Shinigami who could shape shift into a cat, the resonance made the woman laughably easy for the nekomata to handle as the Shihōin princess had no training in dealing with yokai. If her Zanpakutō had not called out to Benihime and had Kisuke come running, Yoruichi could have been killed, or worse, ensnared in a compulsion so strong that it would have made Aizen’s little illusions look like carnival tricks._

_So all of them opened up books on mythology and began to read; Isshin, Masaki, Ryūkin, Urahara, everyone. What they discovered was less than reassuring. The sheer number of creatures that would eat a child for no other reason than it thought the youthfulness of it was tasty or empowering was terrifying. For most people this would not a problem, if you could not see them, they would not look at you in most cases. Ichigo could see them like he could see ghosts and people. Masaki began reiterating ‘do not give your name out to strangers that did not wear police uniforms’ and added ‘even if it looks like an animal’. Ryūken theorized that these creatures might have been what the Quincy clan had initially been targeting in the beginning and continued in depth research on the subject, leaving behind hollow hunting all together._

_But this tragedy happened too soon; they were still only just learning everything they might need to know. He did not even know if whatever spirit that was ‘helping’ meant good or ill. Could not know for he was still spiritually numb from the wound to his spirit he took years ago; at least Masaki and Ryūken were having discernible luck in using their detection abilities in finding the odder creatures of the world (Ryūken discovered that a crow that lived outside his hospital liked to read that way). Aside from the great tree and the sparrows, what else resided in these woods? Was this help a sign that Ichigo was well but lost? Or was it just a way to inform Isshin of his son’s death? Or was this just a means to lure Isshin to his own death? And so panic fueled his feet, keeping Isshin moving even when it seemed like the very woods were trying to reject him from their realm._

_It took a few moments to realize that the sparrows had stopped all together, and a few moments more to see why. Just beyond where he stood was a small clearing that held what looked to be a small shrine. It was atypical as far as shrines go; looking to be made of stone and copper first and foremost though the amount of plant growth on it made it difficult to tell, with stone pillars holding up a stone and copper roof that, aesthetically, resembled the Ise shrines the most. But the stone did not fully enclose the small stone alter with it’s only having walls that were only half as high as the roof. All other details were lost to Isshin when he noticed what lay in the entrance._

_The white creature that looked like a dog, though tradition called the wolf-kami Shiranui, rested easily on the moss covered stone, one dark eye open staring at the former Shinigami with what looked like a vague interest, matching ear perked. Curled up against the wolf in a muddied formal suit was a sun hair child whose breathing patterns matched those of one asleep. Isshin nearly choked with relief as he collapsed on the ground. It was only after regained control of his emotions did realize the trap it might be. Wolves were protectors of the mountains, as what lore he and Masaki had read stated when they had gone back through the stories. Beyond that, they were known to take in children abandoned in the woods. They usually said that they were infants, but if Ichigo truly had blamed himself for Masaki’s death, then maybe he thought that everyone else did too, and…._

_“Please, Shiranui-makami,” Isshin begged, not bothering to pretend that he had any strength he did not have. “Please, let me take him home. I’m sorry that I did not express myself well enough since my wife’s death, but I want my son, Ichigo, to come home with me, now. I won’t ever ask for anything else again if I can take him home. I love him and won’t be able survive without him. Please let me take him back, please.”_

_Isshin heard a huffing sound from the wolf and looked up, unsure if he was being insulted or not. Shiranui-makami had taken to nudging Ichigo with its nose with a purpose that was hard to determine the purpose of until it huffed again and stuck its nose down the collar of the boy’s suit jacket. Twitching, Ichigo stirred and absently tried to squirm away from the wolf’s nose until he needed to catch himself when the wolf stood completely. Rubbing sleep from his eyes, Isshin’s first born noticed his father._

_“Dad?” the nine year old asked, his voice heavy with sleep. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?” He began to crawl out from the shrine but was quickly snatched into Isshin’s arms. “Dad!”_

_“Don’t do that,” Isshin reprimanded, trying not to choke on tears. “Don’t run off like that again. I thought I lost you, too.”_

_Ichigo tried to wriggle out of his arms, but Isshin held on tighter as he backed away from the wolf. Inhaling as though he was about to verbally protest, Ichigo paused with a tilt of a head that usually meant he was listening to someone, though Isshin could hear no sounds. “I fell asleep?” Ichigo asked in a way that most would have thought rhetorical. No longer trying to get away, Ichigo pulled himself up higher so his arms could wrap around Isshin’s neck and could look in his father’s face with a guilt laden look. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to worry you more. I just wanted to get away from the service where it felt like everyone was blaming me for Mom’s death.”_

_“What?” Isshin asked with aghast. “I don’t blame you! Masaki would never forgive-”_

_“Not you dad,” Ichigo said quickly. “But there were some older people there and it felt like they thought that Mom’s death was all my fault, and I felt that it was all my fault, but didn’t mean to, and so I ran away. Shiranui-sama says that it wasn’t very smart because if I had ended up anywhere else I could have gotten hurt.”_

_“Don’t think that,” Isshin said bleakly, how could he let his son think that for a whole week? “Even if she died, I’m proud of her. She did what every mother would want to in her situation; die protecting her child. I would never think that. You should not think that.”_

_“I know,” Ichigo said with a small voice. “Shiranui-sama said the same thing. And I’m going to learn everything I can to make sure that me and Karin and Yuzu don’t see her face to face for a long time so she knows she won.”_

_Isshin sighed as he hugged his son closer, absently noting that soon his son would be too big for this- wait. “What do mean by ‘learn everything’?”_

_“Like Mom,” Ichigo answered easily. “Shiranui-sama doesn’t know what sect Mom belonged too, but she can tell that she was a powerful miko, even if she hadn’t practiced in a while. And I have a lot of power I can use like she could, so Shiranui-sama is going to teach me how she does spells so I can protect everyone now that Mom is dead so she doesn’t have to worry about us and be happy in the afterlife.”_

_“Is she now?” Isshin asked warily, eying the wolf that rested easily under genkan of her shrine. “Is it something that’s going to be expensive? Being taught by a kami must be worth a lot.”_

_“She says that human money isn’t worth anything to her by itself so you don’t have to worry about that,” Ichigo answered. “I’m going to be paying her back with Praise and other things that I might pick up that she likes.”_

_“Praise?”_

_“Yeah,” Ichigo continued. “Praise, or Kō, is what kami and yokai use. I’ll be collecting it by doing tasks for Shiranui-sama so she gets recognition, which makes people believe in her more, which makes her more powerful, and goes on in a loop like that. There is a conversion rate of Kō to Yin that got standardize, so I can still earn a salary, and-”_

_“You don’t need to work,” Isshin protested. “I’m able to support us all.”_

_“I know,” Ichigo said like he thought his father was being deliberately dense. “But I agreed that I would work for Shiranui-sama anyways and she said that it is something that is probably going to come up when I get older so she might as well add it to the contract now.”_

_“_ What contract? _” Isshin asked, his tone level as he kept himself from hyperventilating. He knew how many stories that involved a contract ended badly for the human, and damn it,_ this was his son!

_“The one that says Shiranui-sama is going to teach me how to use her Tenraifude-ryū in exchange for me becoming her vassal and-”_

_“NO!” Isshin snapped. Leveling a glare worthy of any captain of the Gotei 13 at the wolf, who was now sitting up regally, and continued, “He is_ my _son. He lives under_ my _roof. I am head of my family and_ you cannot have him! _”_

_“Dad!” Ichigo exclaimed, his surprise evident on his face. “What are you doing?”_

_“_ I’m not losing you too!”

_“But you’re not losing me!”_

_The wolf barked, neither ruffled nor fearful of the former Shinigami. If anything, it appeared vaguely amused. Ichigo flushed in embarrassment at whatever the wolf had said and looked like he wanted to duck away to hide his face but instead he said, “Shiranui-sama says that she understands why you are worried, and that she had already reprimanded me for having opened negotiations blindly. She also says that we haven’t signed a fully binding contract yet as it has been awhile since she has had to make a contract for teaching and wanted to get a second opinion before making it fully official. Though we have come to a general agreement and swore by it already._

_“And, Dad,” Ichigo continued plaintively, “I made it so you guys come first, no matter what. So you aren’t loosing me. I just want to make sure Mom didn’t die in vain.”_

_Clamping down on his desire to break down into hysterics, Isshin addressed the wolf. “The final contract has to be seen by me before he signs,” he said firmly. “Ichigo is too young to make these agreements on his own and if there is something I don’t like, this whole thing is off, understand?”_

_The wolf barked again and nodded in a very human manner. “She agrees,” Ichigo repeated before burying his face into his father’s neck. Isshin decided to not let whispered ‘I love you, too, dad’ as the sparrows returned to guide them out break him. No matter the tears that fell from his eyes._

 

The wolf had done as she promised, arriving at the Kurosaki household that following Sunday with a lawyer in tow. The lawyer, a conservatively dressed Kitsune woman who introduced herself as Kimura Kiko, had everything a worrying father would want on hand; general law history of Takamagahara and related realms, how it translated into human society of today, the efforts of yokai integrating their customs and lifestyles into the growing human one, which all related into how they agreed to treat children in the Human world.

That was the defining thing; in the Human World. Because there were strong efforts by the yokai that remained in the Human World to integrate into human society; humans, like Ichigo, who could perceive a yokai as they really were was something of a relief and treasured even if they were on their own and vulnerable. Likely the reason why the boy had been able to convince the nekomata to make its vendetta one that would stick to human laws as opposed to just vengeance. Opposite that, if he crossed into a domain of the spirits, something that his innate powers made very likely, he would be highly targeted as either a potential servant or a tasty snack. Part of what becoming Shiranui’s vassal entailed was that he was already in Shiranui’s service if he ventured into these areas. So if anyone tried to snack on him or anyone else under his protection (like his family), they were liable to receive retribution from Shiranui herself.

And that protection, hell, the rest of the benefits that Ichigo gave his family by being the wolf kami’s vassal was good; a deal that if Isshin was being offered for himself, he would take in a heartbeat for the sole reason that it wasn’t _too_ good. Absolute protection for himself and his family, until he is able to defend himself and others from most things on his own, and _only_ until that point. Guaranteed back up in the event that something happened and Ichigo was not ready or able to defend himself or those he was sworn to; logical as attacking a loyal servant of a kami was like an attack on the kami themselves. Training that, if the kitsune’s flicking tail and smirking lips was a good gauge, would likely make any strong akuma or vasto lorde think twice about messing with when complete. All in exchange for promoting the presence of a once great kami now only remembered in local folk tales and preforming miracles in her name that would result in a return of the kami’s power and extending a protection in her domain that only a human could provide.

But this offer was not being offered to Isshin, it was being offered to his nine year old son. He should not have even been thinking of offering his son up to save their lives (and they were in danger, Aizen was only going to continue to lurk around and interfere with his family, and maybe next time in a more direct way). But Ichigo was determined, and serious, and oh so different than the child he had been just a few weeks before his mother’s death, so Isshin asked to have time to think it over, keeping a hold of a copy to deliberate over for the week and invited the kami and the Kitsune back to his house the next week at the same time if it pleased them, or if there was some other time or place to meet….

The two non-humans agreed easily, the kami not having any duties that had time constraints and the Kitsune was on maternity leave (which boggled Isshin until he realized that she really was a lawyer at a human law firm) and therefore had more freedom than she would in a few more weeks. The delay made Ichigo edgy until Kiko explained that it was completely normal thing as they were not in any rush, and Shiranui telling him that Sakuya-hime (who a snickering Ichigo had explained was the kami Isshin had inadvertently called on when he was out looking for the boy) was enjoying scaring off anything vaguely malicious from the neighborhood while the contract was being worked on, so he should not worry about inconveniencing her. So the two creatures left peaceably and Isshin called a meeting at Urahara’s shop.

The three exiles, the former Shinigami, and the Quincy had looked through the contract and came to same conclusion no matter what Isshin’s conscious said; that they should accept it. All the stories about Shiranui spoke of how kind yet powerful she was, aiding both those who worshipped her and those who were in danger in front of her who never even heard of her with equal measure. Combined they spoke of being capable of many different acts of powers from making flowers grow to banishing demons with holy fire. She would run from town to town, even into territories that would not be friendly towards her to look for a medicine, or a special weapon, or a child’s lost pet for very little in return. If there was a kami you wanted to sell a child to (even if that was not what was actually occurring, no matter what Isshin’s guilt whispered to him), it was Shiranui for the sole reason than she already considered any child born in the areas of her protection her children and rarely asked more of them than any reasonable parent would.

It did not make Isshin feel better. Not even Urahara’s assertion that they were gaining an unexpected and direly needed ally could make Isshin feel better. Not even Ryūken’s steady, if still grieving, logic pointed out that his family would at least have as much protection that they had while Masaki was still alive could make Isshin feel better. Not even Tessai’s confidence that whatever the kami taught Ichigo would be different enough that Aizen would not see it coming should he attack the boy could make Isshin feel better. Not even Yoruichi’s wary but determined promise to follow and observe the lessons the kami would teach the child could make Isshin feel better. Not even watching the spark of joy-in-life in his son that Isshin thought was completely smothered after his wife’s death grow again in Ichigo’s gradually increasing smiles and laughs as he continued to grow stronger, and happier, safe and healthy, could make Isshin feel better. Not even years and a dead Hollow later did it make Isshin feel better.

A cup of warm green tea was shoved unceremoniously into his hands, startling Isshin out of his dark musings to look up into his best friend’s, almost brother, face. “Drink and calm yourself,” Ryūken said firmly. “Everyone seems to agree that he’ll recover when the sun rises and Shiranui-kami’s power peaks.” Everyone being the ragtag collection of Yokai, both in human form and not, that came running (or flying) almost as quickly, if not faster, than Ryūken had that were aiding in cleaning up the down stairs as Uryū and a tanuki were sleeping in shifts in the twin’s room for everyone’s peace of mind.

“Why such confidence?” Isshin muttered. “Do they even know what is wrong?”

“The analogy I was given went like this,” Ryūken began. “Every being’s soul makes its own ink. Each day they can either use the ink, or leave it for later. If they use the ink then it will stay used until the conditions for the ink to refill itself are met. For humans, it is eating and sleeping. For Shiranui-kami, whose first power involved the sunrise, it is the rising of the sun. If Ichigo was a normal human, he would have died within moments of releasing that much power and become a Plus. However, by being a Celestial Envoy, a piece of Shiranui-kami’s power resides in his soul as well, supplementing his strength like a portion of a river of ink diverting itself into another river.”

“If Shiranui’s power is currently sustaining him, why is he so cold?” Isshin demanded. “Shiranui’s power is warm, especially this time of year.”

“Because he used up most of it,” Ryūken continued calmly. “He, most likely unconsciously from what the others said, mixed his power with what Shiranui-kami allots him of her power and made a shield of energy around the area that blazes as though she had done so herself. It is only feels that way on the first layer, of course, but it appears to have scared off everything in the city from petty criminals to a small group of akuma that had, apparently, recently snuck in and became convinced that they were discovered. Very powerful and very draining to perform.”

“To be frank, Isshin-san, if you hadn’t done something as stupid as try and heal him the second you reached him, he still might have died. Untested family energy absorbing abilities aside, his living, even if unconscious, body is burning more energy than he is producing at the moment and if you hadn’t shoved what reiatsu you had into him to make the difference until you gave him access to a more potent power, his body would have completely shut down. If it wasn’t for the shinigami’s power lingering, which is opposite enough Shiranui-no-kimi’s power to cause conflict even when working towards the same goal, Ichigo-dono would probably just appear half dead rather than half frozen,” Kiko finished, entering the room with silent foot falls, red furred tail swishing into existence as she walked.

“Police are gone?” Ryūken asked needlessly.

“And very happy that the Kurosaki household is neither wanting to track down the ‘hit and run’ or in need of animal control,” Kiko answered dryly, sipping from her own tea. “Apparently they have had a sudden increase in traffic violations this evening that seem to escalate into higher rating crimes once taken in and would rather be on the streets in case there are any more rather than just add to the number of bodies sitting vigil. Even if it is the night shift that generally likes Ichigo-dono.”

“Is the Shinigami’s power truly having that much effect?” Isshin wondered.

“It has to do with resonances, a thing that humans generally are not affected by directly,” Kiko repeated. “As entities of nature, yokai and kami have times when nature favors us, and times when nature does not. Humans, who are creatures of adaptability and change, can adjust themselves to whatever is needed relatively quickly and survive. Animals, such as foxes and sparrows, can make sure our children can survive a change but often cannot change fast enough to save ourselves. An example of this; if a Kitsune yokai who is used to tropical weather (fire or light) gets trapped in a tundra, any child born there would be born with a more favorable element to survive the tundra (ice or dark) while the Kitsune born in the tropics would likely be unable to survive a second winter do to stress.

“Because Ichigo-dono is a Celestial Envoy in addition to being human, he stands on the threshold of being a kami like spirit and mortal human,” the Kitsune continued as she gave the unconscious teen a fond look born out of years of watching out for and helping the Kurosaki family. “Generally speaking, it means he receives all the benefits of being in resonance without the usual draw backs in the opposing situations. But Ichigo-dono is currently not living off his own power, but off of Shiranui-no-kimi’s power which is, above all things, life, sunlight, spring, and warmth. The shinigami’s power lies in death, winter, and frost. If it were the frost of an icy night, we would risk adding our own power to the volatile mix churning inside as all the powers with in him would be in complete conflict and cancel out entirely, but enough of their power is not fighting each other that it safer to strengthen his body until dawn when his soul’s power through Shiranui-no-kimi will recover sufficiently enough for him to actually rest and recover his own.”

“Does that mean I made things worse?” Isshin asked, stricken that he may have actually hurt his son rather than aided when he instinctively formed a healing kido with all of the reiatsu he could grasp.

“You, Isshin-san, who is almost as familiar to him as his own heart beat? No, you did not,” Kiko sighed, patting the man on the head like a girl would a fond dog. “The stupidity was more in regards to your own health. I do not know what happened to have damaged you soul to such an extent, and I do not know how you human spirits give yourselves mortal guises when you lose the ones you are supposed to be born to (if you are even yet born to them), but you have only just healed enough to begin regaining your powers. Putting stress directly onto your soul as you did this night could have done a more permanent damage if you had pressed yourself enough.”

“You know?” Ryūken said with surprise. As great a sensor he was, the reiraku the Quincy formed when he had checked less than a month ago when Isshin thought he had heard Engetsu in a dream was only just beginning to have red thread back through, not enough to be sensed over the feel of a normal human, yet.

“It is a subtle thing that would not have been noticed if you had not shaped your reiatsu for healing and left lingering traces on your son when we came to check,” Kiko explained. “Your soul has more the feel of new growth, the dawning of a new soul, and the spark of a new life rather than death. But it only has energy markers that a soul from the domain most noted for the dead of humans as opposed to this one of the living would have when shaped. So the only thing to explain it is a new born soul born to the Soul Society that has yet to properly enter the flow of human reincarnation and once had enough power to learn how to use it. So a Shinigami that has yet to experience death, but weakened enough to take up life in the realm of the living with little trouble or notice. Not terribly hard to discern with my considerable experience.”

“Would you mind keeping silent for the time being?” Isshin asked wearily, leaning against the closet door. “I’ve always meant to explain, but only when my powers came back. And for a long time it looked like they wouldn’t.”

“I will not bring it up, but if Ichigo-dono asks me, I will not lie,” Kiko compromised. Isshin knew he would not get better than this so he nodded his agreement. “Though at least I now know why our little Celestial Envoy is already more than half way to being a full kami; he was a hanshin from the very beginning.”

Isshin and Ryūken started as one. “What?”

The Kitsune blinked at the two men in bemusement. “You didn’t know?” she asked in something disturbingly like awe. That was rarely a good sign with the trickster yokai, it usually meant you were about to be the butt of a very spectacular joke and yet to find out.

“There are three types of kami,” Kiko began slowly; it was a running joke among the Yokai Ichigo associated with the most that Isshin ended up attracting all of the spiritually (more specifically yokai and kami) deprived to himself. Because of this, they automatically assume that anyone Isshin was friends with that hadn’t been introduced by Ichigo, was completely ignorant on such matters. Unfortunately, as far as the Yokai were concerned, they have not been wrong yet. “The first are born solely from instances of nature which gain reverence from their beauty or strength, which include Sakuya-hime and others of the old courts. The second is that they gain much power in life and is held in high regard by followers and opponents alike; this is how most yokai become kami, like Inari-Ōkami-sama of the Kitsune. The third is that they gain power after they die; whether through ancestor worship like with the Imperial family or through whatever you human souls do in your Soul Society to become Shinigami.

“Generally speaking,” Kiko continued, reveling in the shell shocked looks on the two humans, “the third manner is the weakest manner to become a kami as, if you are dead, there are limited opportunities to gain worshipers, which add to a kami’s base strength. But starting off as the child of third classification? Yes that explains much about Ichigo-dono’s nature and the fact that he is already showing signs of having his own resonances.”

“Shinigami have resonances like yokai?” Isshin questioned, unable to believe that he failed to realize after twenty years in the living world that Shinigami counted among kami of the living despite their title having the word in it.

Now the Kitsune looked confused. “You mean you Shinigami do not wield different elements or have specific strengths in different circumstances?” Kiko questioned back. Suddenly reminded about Yamamoto sōtaichō and his former third seat, Hitsugaya, Isshin flinched at the likely result of a fight between them.

“No your right,” Isshin amended. “I just never thought that way about us because Engetsu is not tightly bound to the elements like others that I know. I wonder if that means if Kaien had ever gained bankai if he’d been able to beat the sōtaichō with resonance advantage despite lacking the experience?”

“Not to interrupt your musings,” Ryūken interjected. “But does Ichigo’s status of being a hanshin by birth affect your diagnosis of his health now?”

“That really depends on how human Ichigo-dono’s late mother was,” Kiko stated.

Cupping an orb of his reiatsu, the Quincy held it out for the Kitsune to inspect. “She was as human as I am,” Ryūken answered. “We were near kin.”

Kiko sniffed at the energy and poked at it. “Looks as purely human as you can get in this country,” the Kitsune diagnosed. “Maybe something _really_ far back, but not enough to gage by.”

“So no change in diagnosis?” Isshin reiterated.

“No change,” Kiko agreed. She called back to them as she left the room. “The soup that Mata-san was putting on is probably finished by now. I’ll bring some back up for us to force into Ichigo-dono. He is going to need the calories.”

It must have only been moments between the Kitsune leaving the room and returning with a bowl of soup and a number of implements to force liquid down an unconscious patient’s throat, but without conversation to sustain him, Isshin could feel time slip from him again as he watched his son helplessly shiver. At some point after the teen had a whole bowl of soup poured into him and Kiko took all the lingering dishes away, Isshin must have drifted off while standing because the former Shinigami was suddenly jerking awake as Kiko checked on Ichigo again; the orange and pink light of dawn peaking over the horizon. Ichigo was no longer shivering.

“Is he-”

“I believe that he is improving,” Kiko interrupted. “If a lower-mid-grade fever is an improvement.”

“Shiranui-kami has a higher than average temperature,” Ryūken stated tiredly, shifting in the chair he must have taken up after Isshin fell asleep. “It is possible that is only seems like such to us because Ichigo has yet to regain his own power. Did not his base temperature rise after become Shiranui-kami’s student?”

“It did by a degree or two,” Isshin replied uneasily, moving to place his hand on his son’s now fever warm forehead. “I still don’t think it being up this high is normal if he isn’t fighting off an infection.”

“Perhaps just the next stage of shaking off that shinigami’s power,” Ryūken said with a tired sigh. Isshin guiltily wondered if he got any sleep though the former Shinigami did not feel all that rested either.

“That does seem likely,” Kiko agreed, seemingly little worse for wear after a night of, presumably, being more active than either of the two doctors. “In any event, Ichigo-dono is actually resting now. As long as we keep an eye on his fever, he should be recovering soon. Am I to assume that you are not going to be all that useful until then, Isshin-san?”

“Probably not,” Isshin agreed, idly running his fingers through dampening orange hair as the teen slept with a small frown.

“A good thing I already left a memo for my firm that one of my clients was going to be occupying my time for the rest of the day,” Kiko said decidedly. “Do you think that my medical license having expired almost forty years ago will cause a lot of problems in the clinic today?”

“Don’t mention it and fall back on being a nurse if pressed,” Ryūken suggested. “Do you mind if I use your bed for a couple hours of decent sleep, Isshin-kun?”

“No, go ahead,” Isshin replied, grabbing the chair Ryūken just vacated. “I’ll be here if you need me. Will one of you wake me up before the girls leave for school?”

“Of course,” Kiko said with a small smile. “I’ll go familiarize myself with your clinic until it is time for everyone to wake up. Good sleeping boys.”

The two other adults left Isshin alone with his sleeping son after this. Morosely, Isshin dropped his head onto the edge of Ichigo’s bed and held one of his son’s hands. “Get better, Ichigo,” Isshin said emptily. “I don’t want to not be able to see you anymore.” He was in a restless sleep in moments.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shihakushō- work uniform. in the case of shinigami it is their black outfit  
> kote- a type of hand-arm guard in Japanese armor. (think a combination of hollow ichigo [pre-Ulquiorra] colors and Shiranui colors)  
> sune-ate- a type of foot-shin guard, i think it takes the place of grieves. (think a combination of hollow ichigo [pre-Ulquiorra] pattern and Shiranui pattern)  
> daito-"long sword"  
> ōdaichi- what i would call a "stupidly long sword", like sephiroth's sword in ffvii  
> torī- the red arch in Shinto  
> shinketsu- 'pure blood' shinigami, in this case a new born soul. in this story, if shinigami has a child, it is considered to be a shinketsu even if tite kubo has yet to confirm or deny whether or not a shinigami can have a child who is someone's reincarnation.  
> tsukumogami- a item that becomes self animated and a yokai after 100 years  
> nekomata- fork tail cat or two tailed cat yokai that is closer to the evil ed of the spectrum than the gray-to-good. can shapeshift, control dead souls and corpses, make fire, other magic things to torment people.  
> makami- a term of address for wolves who die and become kami or yokai afterwards. Isshin uses this term because at the time he thought that Shiranui was a wolf equivalent of a shinigami not a nature kami.  
> genkan- and entry way  
> Kō- the japanese word for the praise earned in okami. more on the exchange system in later chapters  
> no-kimi- an address that is considered archaic form of 'my lady' that was used in feudal japan to refer to lords or ladies of the court. while normally used nowadays the same as "she is such a princess" or "my beloved __", Shiranui's status as a minor goddess form of Amaterasu means that she is automatically a 'lady of the court' and so is a valid honorific to denote respect rather than an insult.  
> dono- 'my lord/master', in this instance it is more similar to a 'Sir Knight' than 'master of the manor, etc.'  
> hanshin- demigod


	4. Waxing Crescent: 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Sun has risen, the shadows that are cast are long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So last chapter was written before I read chapter 534 so it is slightly AU now, darn it. So to explain then, as far as this story is concerned White v.2 got fried by Isshin Final Getsuga Tensho leaving Isshin mortal and in love with Masaki with Ryuken feeling indebted to Isshin. I may add more on that later when 536 comes out next week.  
> This is more of an interlude.

## Chapter 3: Waxing crescent: 1 (二日月)

 

Ichigo began to regain consciousness slowly. The first thing he was aware of was a ball of cold in his chest even though the rest of him was on the line between comfortably warm and a little hot. The second thing the teenager became aware of was a lethargy that pulled at him; somewhere between tired and the ache of illness though the fatigue did not feel as though it was in his muscles and blood. The third was that one of his hands was not under the warm blankets with him. So he tried to tug his hand to his chest and let out a small, pathetic whine that he would latter deny when the limb refused to move.

“Ichigo?” came a startled mumbled grunt that made the teen cringe when he recognized it the second before he was pulled into a hug. “ICHIGO! MY DARLING FIRST SON HAS AWAKENED!”

Shivering at being suddenly exposed to cooler air, Ichigo groaned as he mentally frowned, not being able to do so in reality. Years of being told to ‘pay attention’ to what people may try and bustle under loud exclamations and showy movements made the teen note his father’s increase of heart rate, the difference between this hug and his father’s usual overzealous expressions of love, and the fact that there was underlining sound of relief in his father’s voice rather than mischief like there usually was when he launched himself into his bedroom every morning to wake the teenager up. Remembering his achy tiredness, Ichigo’s slow brain settled on ‘recovering from serious illness’ and tried to remember when he started feeling symptoms.

“How long have I been sick?” Ichigo mumbled, trying to struggle out of his father’s death grip.  “Let go, I’m cold.”

“You have a fever,” Isshin said into orange hair, his refusing to let go of his grip. Instead, he secured it by half pulling the teen into his lap.

Unable to bring himself to fight his father’s unspoken need to reassure himself, Ichigo sighed and struggled to pull the blanket over his shoulders. “It doesn’t mean that I’m adjusted to the air temperature,” Ichigo argued weakly. “Are Karin and Yuzu still here?”

“Nope,” the middle aged man declared. “Daddy was good and made sure his little girls made it to school on time despite how worried for their idiot and delinquent brother they were. My darling Masaki would never forgive me for letting our precious daughters fall to such delinquency.”

“Who were you yelling at, then?”

“That would be me, Ichigo-dono,” came a voice he normally did not expect to hear in the morning.

“Kimura-san,” Ichigo wondered. “What are you doing here?”

“The more important question is, what do you remember of last night?” the Kitsune woman asked.

Ichigo frowned, leaning back against his headboard after his father finally released him from ‘Death Grip of Doom’ and tried to think back to the last thing he remembered clearly. There was the thugs he curb-stomped for disturbing the little girl. Then dinner with the cubical drone ghost. After that… Shinigami… wards down… Hollow… cold….

Ichigo jerked, his eyes widening as the memories crashed into the forefront of his mind. “Oh, kami!” Ichigo exclaimed. “Is everyone alright?”

“The only one significantly damaged from the encounter was you,” Kimura-san answered, her tone somewhat dryly as she put her hands in the pockets of her lab coat. “And you only suffered minor injuries from the encounter itself.”

“What about Rukia?” Ichigo asked, noticing for the first time the bandage on his arm from where the Hollow had scratched him.

“Who?” Kimura-san asked plainly. Ichigo looked up, checking her expression to make sure she was serious.

“The Shinigami,” Ichigo said. Looking between his parent and his lawyer, the teen continued when he noticed the continued looks of confusion. “It looked like her shoulder was broken and she was bleeding rather strongly. Admittedly, I don’t know how that really translates from mater being to spirit being in terms of severity. I only know that it is one part subconsciously remembering how a living body is supposed to respond and one part viewer’s mind attempting to put into perspective the nature of the injury, but it looked rather bad.”

“She was not here when I arrived,” Kimura-san said.

“It was probably a good thing she left, though,” Isshin confessed. “Between Karin and Uryū-kun after he first got here and we explained what happened, they might have done something rash before we could stop them.”

“Why would they?” Ichigo asked in confusion. “We’d probably be dead if it wasn’t for her.”

“Emotions and reason do not often go together,” Kimura answered. “All they were seeing was the fact that you were injured with an injury they could not see. Though I wish she had swung back sometime later so I could talk to her about the continued effects of her reiatsu on you.”

“Continued effects?” Ichigo echoed. “But I used all of her lingering reiatsu when I made the ward.”

“Something I forbid you to ever do again,” Isshin said firmly. “The only reason you aren’t dead is because the Shinigami powers did not completely cancel out your Shiranui-sama’s.”

“Whatever the reason,” Kimura-san explained, “the Shinigami’s power seems to be both lingering and attempting to grow with in you. However, that is less apparent now that Shiranui-no-kimi’s power has been replenished within you. And I concur; however effective your current ward is in making darker entities run the for other districts, using your power in such an ineffective manner will only lead to your death and the death of those you are trying to protect.”

“Was I really that close to dying?” Ichigo asked.

“If it was just one thing, it would have most likely have been less dire,” Kimura-san answered. “However, not only were you physically going into shock, you were spiritually going into shock from the conflict in resonances between Shiranui-no-kimi’s and the Shinigami’s power. Stacked on top of this was your using all of your neutral human power which increased the effects of this resonance dissonance occurring within you while exasperating the shock your body was going through.”

“Oh,” Ichigo finally said, unable to look at his father in his guilt. “I did not realize that I had over exerted myself that much.”

“Or thought it did not actually apply to you?” Kimura-san asked rhetorically. The Kitsune crossed the room to pat the Celestial Envoy on the head. “Don’t worry, you’re a teenager. This sort of thing was bound to happen at some point.”

“It already happened before this,” Isshin whined dramatically. “He has made such a delinquent of himself.”

“Hey, that Nogitsune was _not my fault_ ,” Ichigo complained.

“He did get that particular delinquent before he could cause much trouble,” Kimura-san agreed.

Isshin huffed with exaggerated disdain. “Fine, encourage him. See if I care. Some preserver of the law you are.”

“Speaking of that,” Ichigo began, giving the Kitsune a suspicious look, “what are you doing here, Kimura-san?”

“Aside from deterring one of my elder children from causing mischief on the street while he pretends to be your wall?” Kimura-san dodged. “I do have some medical talent despite being some years out of date on human medical advances. I also have an insight into spirit wounds that your father probably does not. I thought that would be appreciated, all things considered.”

“He’s gotten pretty good at diagnosing what manner of creature leaves that sort of mark even if my sisters and I are really the only ones who can give proper treatment,” Ichigo defended, feeling the slight aimed at his father. He knew that his father walked on eggshells when it came to spirits that were not human based, but Ichigo also knew the two normally got along well together as she had spent the better part of two centuries apart of the human society and could he not figure out what why her tone had gotten so sharp at the end.

“Of course he has,” Kimura-san agreed. “Tell me, how you are feeling? Any pain?”

“Not pain,” Ichigo answered as the Kitsune began to poke at him, small flares of exploratory yoki seeping into his shoulders along his pressure points. “But I am feeling the sort of lethargic ache that I normally associate with the flu. But it does not feel like an ache in my bones or muscles like when I am home with the flu.” Not that he has really suffered through the full brunt of a flu virus since becoming Shiranui-sama’s Celestial Envoy.

“That is most likely the dissonance between Shiranui-no-kimi’s power and the Shinigami’s,” the Kitsune stated absently as she checked his reactions to his injured arm (slight twinges of pain). “While I have not suffered through a human flu virus, those symptoms do sound like what a Kitsune will suffer through if caught in a dissonance. My apologies for doubting your tutelage, Ichigo-dono, but has Shiranui-no-kimi covered how to view one’s soul internally?”

“She has,” Ichigo answered, not feeling the least bit insulted as the Kitsune backed away. “It is part of how to keep the brush techniques organized when a number of them are contrary to each other.”

“Good,” Kimura-san sighed with relief. “If I may say so, Ichigo-dono, but attempting to venture into your soul is not something I would dare to try under normal circumstances. Doing so when you are still recovering from trauma is more than slightly fur raising in terms of apprehension level.”

“You think the problem can be solved with, whatever that is?” Isshin asked, the part of him that was a medical profession asked with curiosity.

“Best chance, at least,” the Kitsune confirmed. “I’ll get some food started for the two of you. Unless you wanted to get some proper sleep, Isshin-san?”

“Proper sleep?” Isshin repeated with mock insult. “I feel completely energized knowing that my first born is well once more! Why would I need to get any more sleep?”

“Of course, Isshin-san,” Kimura-san said agreeably as she exited Ichigo’s room. Alone, the two Kurosaki men stayed in an awkward silence.

“Well,” Isshin finally said. “I’ll just go take a shower. While Kiko-san is not hard on the eyes, my patients probably want someone who has had their doctorate renewed with in the last couple decades.”

“Dad?” Isshin stopped in the doorway and look back at his eldest, questions in his eyes. Ichigo shuffled in place with embarrassment. “Thanks for being here when I woke up.”

Isshin smiled one of his rare true smiles. “Of course,” he said in what Ichigo thought of as his Dad voice. It was gone the next second though. “Not that I was here for any other reason than to make sure how much you worried your sisters, you delinquent.”

“‘Course not,” Ichigo sighed contemptuously, puffing himself up and giving his father beady look. His father, being the pinnacle of maturity in the Kurosaki family that he was, blew a raspberry before cackling himself down the hallway with heavy steps.

Shaking his head in incredulity, Ichigo crossed his legs and began to meditate.

* * *

 

Clinching his fingers around his pencil, Ishida Uryū made sure that his reiatsu did not spike as the girl, _Shinigami_ , was introduced as a late transfer. Her power was weakened, but she seemed uninjured otherwise. This was his target. This was the one who tried to take his acquaintance, his comrade, his _first friend_ away from him. Who might have yet succeeded despite the adults’ confidence when he and the twins were awaken that morning so they could make it to school on time. After all, it was not as though Kurosaki-san was focused anywhere else other than his son’s room as his plate remained untouched and tea had gone cold.

The tears of the Kurosaki twins made the Last Quincy wish that any spiritually aware human could learn to form a spirit weapon to wield.

 Uryū should not have let his guard down like that, making a friend. He should have known better; he was the last Quincy, it was the Shinigamis’ mission to make the Quincy line despair themselves out of existence. He would have to act quickly, during lunch, to keep the Shinigami from going after Sado-kun or the Kurosaki twins as well. After all, it was not as though it had much power right now. Sado-kun would understand why the innocent looking murderer had to die. It’s not like anyone else would think that she had gotten hit by anything other than lightning, anyways.

* * *

Ichigo fell weightlessly into his inner world, landing on top of the skyscrapers that made up the section dedicated to the Catwalk and part of Thunderstorm’s power in the half of his inner world in the dark of Moonrise. Above him was both the moon and his Center Tree, where he felt he needed to head to. Planting his foot on the glass of lit the skyscraper; Ichigo began to walk vertically towards the ground as though he was walking on a normal sidewalk.

Gravity in Ichigo’s inner world was odd starting off, curving inversely like in those science fiction stories involving space colonies with the sky in the middle and the ground on the edges. This was made worse in his skyscraper city by the fact that Catwalk made the user travel vertically. Ichigo had decided some time ago that the only reason he was not thoroughly confused by it was because it belonged to him. His Center Tree was the tree that seemed to reflect his wellbeing and, if Ichigo was right, the sign of his link to Shiranui-sama from some of the things he had found hanging off the branches. It was also one of the only places that you could not tell how off gravity actually was in this world. The other places were in areas considered ‘indoors’ and the sky was not visible.

Reaching the end of the skyscraper, Ichigo grabbed the convenient metal sheet and dropped it on the metal rail that connected through most of his inner world. Charging the railing with electricity, Ichigo surfed, for lack of a better term, out of the skyscraper city with Magnetism, passed the workshop that held Rejuvenation, using Guidance to reach the railway on the other side of the river that divided night and day; the source of which held Waterspout. Continuing on pass the windmill that held Galestorm and the path to the mountains with lightning rods that caught Thunderbolts to power the electricity in his inner world, Ichigo relished the feeling of sunlight on his skin even if it was only a product of his mind.

Maybe once he would have never thought much of the outdoors and sunshine; but with Ichigo’s duties of being a Celestial Envoy often causing him to head into areas and do tasks that many but the best and most dedicated yamibushi would likely balk at, the teen had gained an appreciation for both the outdoors of the wild and the sprawling cityscapes of man’s civilization. It probably also affected his appreciation of such things in that he associated sunlight to Shiranui-sama and plant life in general to Sakuya-hime, both of whom had eased the void of loneliness left by his mother’s death. They could never replace her, and never did they ever try, but the presence of female, mothering figures that Ichigo did not have to worry over the safety of and could turn to had lifted a heavy burden from his shoulders.

Entering the grove of flowers and trees that held the Greensprout, Ichigo slowed down and pulled to a stop in front of the path that led to the tree. The metal sheet vanished as he stood away from it and began to walk; Ichigo never bothered to connect the Tree directly to the rest of the network. He always found the walk meditative and relaxing despite the fact that it was ironic as Ichigo could only be in here if he was meditating. However, the walk lost its relaxing quality as he got closer to the Tree. Visible from a distance, Ichigo could make out frost cover flowers and grass, icicles hanging from the lower limbs of the Tree, generally looking like bomb had gone off except instead of burning it froze. The ice was already melting under the intensity of the summer sun, but the fact that there was ice here in the Summer at all was worrisome. At least Ichigo now knew what lead his father and the others to be so worried about.

Ichigo paused before cresting the hill as he heard sounds that should not have been. In his inner world, there was rarely anything other than the sound of the wind through the trees or the babbling of the flowing water. Only on a few occasions had Ichigo heard the sounds of what would constitute of normal wildlife (birdsong, squirrel chatter, yips from foxes and other creatures) while meditating and that had only been when he had started extremely content and more than happy. Now he heard the sound of something struggling. Unconsciously calling a sword from Powerslash, Ichigo stalked up the rest of the hill. The sword vanished before Ichigo could notice it as he saw what was making the noises.

Seeming trapped within the roots of Ichigo’s Center Tree, a young woman in a white formal kimono with an extremely pale purple and yellow obi was pushing futilely against the roots of the tree. From the hiccupping sounds, Ichigo guessed that the spirit (Yuki-ona?) was crying or very close to it as she wriggled from side to side, exceedingly pale lavender, almost white, hair falling from two hair clips that Ichigo had a sinking feeling matched Rukia’s eyes. By the time Ichigo arrived at the base of the tree, the woman screamed in frustration.

“Damn you!” the woman wailed, slamming her fists against the tree, adding another layer of frost to the roots around her. “I don’t want to be here! Let me go!”

“Hey!”

The woman shrieked, pale blue eyes wide with surprise and wet with tears. She shrank back as far away from Ichigo as she could, terror easily apparent in her eyes. Her shoulders quaked as her mouth worked soundlessly before she began to hiccup in earnest.

“Hey,” Ichigo repeated, softer this time, hands open in front of him in a not threatening manner. “It’s alright, you’re alright, I’m not going to hurt you.” Right thing or wrong thing to say, the woman began to weep. Throwing caution (and the fact he could be frozen) to the wind, Ichigo quickly knelt in front of the woman and pulled her to his shoulder and began to rub soothing circles on her back the same way that Kimura-san and Tomiko-hime did to their children when they were upset. “Shush, shush. You’ll be okay.”

“I want to go home!” the young woman wailed. “It’s too warm here! I don’t want to die!”

“I don’t want you to die, either,” Ichigo assured. “What’s your name?”

“I will not tell you!” the woman snapped as she jerked herself away from the teen, suddenly angry. “Only my Rukia may use me and call my name!”

“Easy, there, easy,” Ichigo said soothingly, eying the hardening frost. “Forgot you weren’t human for a second. I have no interest in taking your name and gaining your powers, I already have some powers over ice. Though, you must admit, that it might be useful to know as I am trying to remove you from my mind.”

“I do not know why I should,” the Yuki-ona denied. “You are not even Nejibana-sama’s new wielder! Your soul holds a different spirit all together!”

Ichigo blinked in confusion. “Nejibana?” the celestial envoy queried. “Is that a spirit you knew?”

“She belonged to Kaien-dono,” the Yuki-ona sniffled. “We had to kill him because he got infected by a hollow. Ukitake-taichō said it was not our fault; that it was his own as a captain because he did not act in time to save Kaien-dono. It does not mean much though; after all I was the one to fell the blow. You look so much like him, I thought that at least I would be able to speak to Nejibana-sama again if I was trapped here. But that Zanpakutō down there isn’t anything like Nejibana-sama, all cool and dark without any seas or tides and it’s too warm up here, and I _want to go home!”_

“Maybe that just means that my sisters or I will have a child with the seas and tides to hold your Nejibana-sama,” Ichigo soothed, intrigued at how much the Yuki-ona was willing to say instead of her name. He wondered if that meant Rukia would respond the same way, giving away a lot of information that was probably classified to anyone in the living world before divulging her own name, which would be rather inconsequential in the long run. “What is the name that I would need to give the sword of the brave Shinigami Kuchiki Rukia, who continues to weep for the lost seas and tides when I pass this story on to my descendants?”

“Sode no Shirayuki,” the Zanpakutō said proudly, “the most beautiful Zanpakutō in all of Seireitei.”

“See, Shirayuki-san,” Ichigo said teasingly, “that wasn’t so bad.”

The yuki-ona of a Zanpakutō stared at the celestial envoy with horror. Unfortunately for Ichigo, it quickly turned into rage.  “You tricked me!” she shrieked, waves of frost rolling off her, Ichigo having to pull on his skill of Blizzard to not be harmed or other wised embarrassed.

“Sorry, sorry,” Ichigo shouted. “But if you are stuck in my soul, it is probably prudent that I know your name so I can command you to return to your wielder.”

The Zanpakutō spirit stopped. “Oh,” Sode no Shirayuki said. “Why did you not just say so?”

Ichigo sighed in despair. “I thought that I had made that clear.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“Not a problem.”

“Right then,” the yuki-ona said decisively, straightening her kimono as much as she could being in such an awkward position. “Let us start this then.”

“Right,” Ichigo agreed, treading along the roots carefully. Was this really a common facet of women? “First things first.” The teen cleared his throat in what he thought was an officious manner and gently laid his hand on top of Sode no Shirayuki’s head. “I, Kurosaki Ichigo, student and envoy of Shiranui, the wolf of the returning dawns, and Celestial Envoy of Takamagahara bid the Zanpakutō, Sode no Shirayuki, return to her Shinigami partner, Kuchiki Rukia.” There was a small flare of power but otherwise nothing else happened. “Right track at least.”

“Is it relevant that she is an adoptive member of the Kuchiki clan and is a member of the Thirteenth division of the thirteen court guards of the Seireitei?” the Zanpakutō asked, glaring at the roots as if they were horrendously insulting. Shrugging his shoulders, Ichigo tried again.

“I, Kurosaki Ichigo, student and envoy of Shiranui, the wolf of the returning dawns, and Celestial Envoy of Takamagahara bid the Zanpakutō, Sode no Shirayuki, return to her Shinigami master, Kuchiki Rukia, adoptive member of the Kuchiki clan and member of the Thirteenth division of the Thirteen court guards of the Court of Pure Souls,” Ichigo pronounced again, trying to consciously guide the tug on the foreign spirit, though it ultimately failed again. “Right, how many more variations do you want to try?”

They tried it a few more time, adding in from district 78 and ‘Savior of the Tama Hills Tanuki’ among other ridiculous things (‘Fleer of the hordes of kits?’ ‘Hey, you try and deal with Kitsune and Tanuki babies that may or may not be Hanyō on sugar highs and not wish to claim the same!’), but ultimately ended in failure. Ichigo frowned the roots while Shirayuki glared at nothing in particular, a flush bright on her cheeks. The flush actually worried the Celestial Envoy as he could not tell if it was from emotion or a sign of Shiranui-sama’s power over powering the much weaker Zanpakutō spirit. Kneeling against the roots, Ichigo tried to feel the damage in the tree.

“How exactly are you stuck down there?” the teenager asked. “I cannot feel any of the sharp edges I would normally expect from someone crashing through an older portion of a tree under your ice.”

“That’s because you are viewing me as a spirit and not a Zanpakutō,” the yuki-ona sighed. Waving her arms, she continued, “Try looking at me like this.” Shirayuki’s form wavered before revealing an ice cold blade leaning out from a hole punctured into the roots of the tree.

The hole itself was truly not large enough for a person of the yuki-ona’s size to fit all the way, explaining why he was unable to see the tearing before. At the end of the hilt, a long, white ribbon hung tied up around the deeper roots of the tree. Beyond these roots, there looked to be something resembling at tunnel, though Ichigo could not tell where it led. Leaning into the hole slightly, making sure not to stab himself on the Zanpakutō as he did so, he pulled at the blur between him and the end of the ribbon. Ichigo blinked at the knotted red ribbons that this produced. One seemed to extend from him and down through the dark passages beneath the tree, the other from the end of the ribbon and what must have been out of his soul.

“That doesn’t look great,” Ichigo said dryly, leaning back away from the hole. The form of the sword blurred back into a yuki-ona.

“Oh no,” the woman gasped. “Is it my ribbon? It got torn, didn’t it? I did not feel any damage to it, but I cannot really tell with all of the roots it is wrapped around. I’m ugly now, aren’t I?” The woman began to sniffle again.

“No, no, no; nothing like that,” Ichigo corrected quickly, not really liking to deal with crying women even though he has been forced into enough situations over the years to keep the situation from getting worse, in most cases. “It just looks like the thread that binds you to Rukia-san got wrapped around the one that binds me to my Zanpakutō. Though I’m not sure how that happened, I should not have access to a Zanpakutō until I die.”

“You are right, that isn’t very good,” the Zanpakutō spirit agreed, calming down with the knowledge of the actual situation. “The fact that you can access some of your Shinigami powers is not so much a problem as the reiraku being tied together. In order for you to use my power, I had to break through the boundary between your being alive and your being dead; thus, the hole in the tree. But I don’t know how to fix tied together when I’m stuck like this.”

“I guess I can ask the spirits in the area,” Ichigo said with a frown, scratching the back of his neck as he stood. “If nothing else, they can pass word up to Shiranui-sama and Sakuya-hime for advice. It won’t be a quick fix, though we can probably get word back to your commanding officer relatively quickly if you and Rukia cannot as you are now.”

 “I guess I cannot ask for more,” the winter spirit said morosely.

“Don’t worry,” Ichigo repeated, patting the yuki-ona on the head. “I’ll make sure you and Rukia get home safely. All I ask is that you be a bit patient as we are likely to have to go through the dreaded powers of bureaucracy to get everything sorted.”

“Ugh,” the spirit gasped with a shudder. “I hate politics.”

“It was Shiranui-sama’s dislike of politics that led to her being available to teach me so I cannot hate it in its entirety,” Ichigo said with a shrug. Turning with a wave, the teen continued, “Let me rearrange in here so you don’t melt so I can leave and work on how to make sure your Rukia can get home safe.”

The actual process of rearranging his inner world in a way that would allow for the Zanpakutō to survive in the precarious position of being trapped by Shiranui-sama’s power was actually easier than one would expect. As Shiranui-sama was the guardian and embodiment of the Tenraifude-ryū, she had power over Blizzard and therefore had the capacity to let a winter spirit stay in her presence without problem. Therefore, as her student, Ichigo had the ability to allow a winter spirit stay in his inner world. Usually, Ichigo had the area around his center tree reflect the current season (presently, late spring/early summer) through the close arrangement of the brush token for Sunrise, Greensprout, and Mist which allowed for the Inner world to show the passage of the seasons (and time if he thinks about it as he is coming in). To make his inner world to reflect winter, all he had to do was place the ox statue for Blizzard near the tree and the season would change.

Having never left the change longer than a session of practice, Ichigo left the quickly retrieved statue in the care of Sode no Shirayuki. The Zanpakutō clutched the statue tightly as she watched with small wonder as the bright and warm summer day became a crisp and frosty winter one, the bright and green leafed tree rippling into a dormant leafless one. Quickly ascending to full consciousness, Ichigo took stock of his health as he did a full set of stretches, sighing in relief as he noticed that the flu like ache vanished. Changing quickly into his school uniform, Ichigo was silently grateful that he had a tendency to do most of his homework before coming home as he grabbed his supplies and headed down stairs to where he could hear a friendly by play going on between his father and what sounded like one of the clinic’s regulars and Kimura-san. Now if only he could convince his father to accept taking in the injured Shinigami (where ever she was now) without making a fuss over it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yoki- I believe that is the proper term from the yokai equivalent for reiki and maybe reiryoko in general  
> Yuki-ona- snow woman, believed to be the spirit of a woman who died in a snow storm or some other form of female winter spirit. generally considered a neutral entity.


	5. The Sleeping Dragons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Power being present does not mean you want it to be used.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit more exposition, sorry. I just want everyone to know where all the main characters (and OC minor characters) are before action picks up. Next chapter should be the last of the introductory chapters with some Quincy vs. Substitute Shinigami sparing. I think.

# Chapter 4: The Sleeping Dragons (睡眠竜)

 

Arisawa Tatsuki frowned as she surveyed the classroom room. Keigo and Mizuiro showed signs of being worried about Ichigo but were not overly so; after all, he could survive gods and demons, a car that did not even hit him was not going to kill him (even if everyone that knew him personally knew that the story was a lie and that something else happened to Ichigo). Orihime was worried but more in the ‘he is my crush, I don’t want him hurt’ sort of way; knowing the unfortunate reality that Ichigo really could be grievously injured and dying but rejecting those thoughts out of hand. Sado-kun was calm, confident in Ichigo’s durability, except for frequent glances at Ishida-kun. Not without cause either.

Ishida, according to Mizuiro, had been at the Kurosaki home when he had gone over to join up with Ichigo to come to class; finding the agitated introvert instead. From what Mizuiro was able to gleam from the teen’s father, who is the director of the hospital and personal friend of Kurosaki Patriarch, they arrived after the ‘car accident’ that took out a wall and Ichigo was already passed out from stress exhaustion. They were to be assured that the scowly, orange haired teenager would be back at school the next day. Ishida, despite not being overtly obvious, had looked like he wanted to commit murder, or at least, some serious battery when he caught sight of the new transfer, Kuchiki Rukia. Tatsuki wondered if it was because of the slightly off feeling she gave or if Ishida knew more than what was being said. All she could tell with her own senses was that Kuchiki-san seemed to be looking worriedly at the door as though she was waiting for someone to come in, too.

Tatsuki glanced at the clock for the nth time that day. Thirty minutes till lunch and Ichigo still had yet to show up. She did not know why she expected him to; his family had officially called the school to let them know of the absence, but she felt like that it was important Ichigo arrived before then. Tatsuki called it a gut instinct; you did not need to be a Celestial Envoy staring down yokai who did not care if a person died or not to recognize a situation about to get ugly. Someone knocked on the classroom door and the whole room snapped their attention to it.

‘Please be Ichigo, please be Ichigo,’ Tatsuki prayed silently as their Sensei stopped her lecture and pulled open the door. Tatsuki nearly went boneless with relief at the sight of Ichigo’s orange hair bowing politely.

“My apologies for being late and interrupting class, sensei,” the teen stated as he straightened. The martial artist cringed at the dark circles visible on the Celestial Envoy’s face from where she sat at the back of the room. He certainly looked like he got hit by the metaphysical car that left a hole in his house. “I would have waited for the end the period to enter, but I did not remember if there was a test this period and I had hoped to catch up if that was the case.”

“Kurosaki-kun, I am surprised to see you at all,” their Sensei told him. “Your father said that you were home sick.”

“He worries too much,” Ichigo dismissed, obviously waiting for their sensei to clear the doorway so he could enter. “Overly warm and overly tired doesn’t make one sick.”

“If you say so,” their Sensei relented, stepping aside. “Ochi-sensei had placed a late transfer next to you before you were marked as absent. I’m certain your classmates can continue to help her out if you are not feeling up to it. And the test is scheduled for next week.”

“No worries, I can do it,” Ichigo said quickly. Tatsuki gave a speculative frown as a few of the stress lines vanished from his face as he walked around to his aisle, leaving a note for Ishida as he walked passed; smooth enough that the only reason Tatsuki noticed was because she was expecting it. Was he relieved to see the transfer? Did she really have something to do with last night?

She must have, Tatsuki amended to herself as she noted that the transfer also seemed relieved at Ichigo’s appearance; giving a small, shy wave in response to Ichigo’s careless one as he sat down as Sensei continued the end of her lecture. Tatsuki did not know why she bothered; it was not like half the class was not paying her any mind anymore. At least Ishida did not look like he was going to murder anyone any time soon. Not that he looked completely pacified either. Tatsuki could sympathize; anyone with ‘dragon’ in their name had to have a ferocious rage somewhere in them. It was why the martial artist was sure to not let it build up too much; since becoming a Celestial Envoy, Ichigo learned a whole new set of stories about dragons. Including how many ‘freak natural disasters’ were really blinded by anger dragons on a rampage. Europe had _reasons_ for thinking all of their dragons were spawns of demons and disaster.

The bell rang for lunch to start, leaving their sensei to end class lamely as the class stopped paying attention all together. Almost as one, the class turned to stare at Ichigo. Ichigo stared back with his bland ‘this is a waste of my time’ look. When the curious students didn’t back down (Ishida, Sado, Keigo, Mizuiro, Orihime and Tatsuki herself just packed up their bags to move to where they normally had lunch), Ichigo sighed and glared at them with a slouch and a scowl. “There is, presently, a rather bored Kitsune pretending to be my wall so my Dad can treat patients in peace,” Ichigo declared carelessly. “Do you want me to give him any of your addresses?” The class fled. “Che, cowards.”

“They probably remember the Nogitsune,” Sado pointed out as he pulled up his bag over his shoulder.

“I think only the very stubborn will forget the Nogitsune,” Mizuiro said with a sigh as he led the way out of the room.

“Why are we talking about Nogitsune?” the transfer said suddenly, making her continued presence known. The way her hand was twitching, it looked as though she wanted to either cling to or drag Ichigo off.

“Oh, you missed it,” Orihime said companionably as though the outsider was not an outsider at all. “At the beginning of the school year, a Nogitsune started tormenting the school. Kurosaki-kun, Sado-kun, and Ishida-kun were able to subdue it before anyone got hurt.”

“It was young enough that it was more comparable to a teenage gangster rather than a full grown Yakuza hit man,” Ichigo explained, scratching his head in embarrassment. “It took a while to convince the superintendent of the school that the classrooms that were destroyed were the best case scenario and not suspend us.”

“At least the police super is a friend of yours so he took our side,” Keigo said.

“It was hardly ‘our’ side, Asano-san,” Mizuiro interjected. “We barely did more than hide.”

“So cruel!”

“Of course I’m sure Kuchiki-san, I believe we were told that was your name, has better things to do than listen to us go on,” Ishida broke in, glancing at the shorter teen sideways.

“Not really,” Ichigo corrected with a grimace. Tatsuki shared a glance with everyone else as Ishida’s grip spasmed on his bag. A heavy silence fell over their group as they went up to the roof, their unofficial school yard base of operation. Once everyone was clear of the doorway, Tatsuki slammed the door shut and bolted the door to keep any of the other students from wandering up. The only way on or off the roof was the side of the building; a feat she knew Ichigo could pull off but would likely avoid while in his obviously poor condition.

“Alright,” Tatsuki declared with her talk or get beaten to a pulp tone. “One of you needs to explain what is going on. Now.”

Kuchiki’s eyes narrowed in a way made Tatsuki think that this serious face was her more normal look even while Ichigo huffed and pressed his lips together. His eyes cut across to Keigo, Mizuiro, and Orihime. “You three,” he said in his Celestial Envoy voice, the one that was comparable to anyone in a command of a team that risks their lives semi-regularly. “Corner. Now.”

“What!” Keigo cried exaggeratedly. Tatsuki knew that he would probably shake off any hurt feelings relatively easily as he was relatively aware of his limitations and knew that Ichigo was aware of them, too, and would not tell him to back off if he did not think it was beyond Keigo’s capabilities.

“Of course,” Mizuiro said with a sigh.

“No!” Orihime protested bravely.

“Inoue-”

“You’re hurt,” she continued, her voice wobbling dangerously as she stared down Ichigo. “Maybe not badly, or maybe it’s not a physical hurt, but it is in a way that makes me worried. And I want to know what happened so if it really isn’t a problem anymore, I can have the facts so I can keep my mind quiet and not make me worried needlessly.”

“This is a dryer socks situation, though,” Ichigo warned. “Nogitsune kind of dryer socks. Once you know it you can’t un-know it.”

“Considering we have already been exposed to Nogitsune,” Mizuiro pointed out dryly, “It might be better if we have an idea of what is coming so we know how to run from it.”

“If you are sure,” Ichigo drawled, eying the three down to see if they would waver.

“Ichigo,” the transfer hissed under her breath. Ichigo waved her down.

“I like knowing what the bad guys look like,” Keigo pointed out, holding himself still under Ichigo’s scrutiny. “I don’t like getting caught in a situation where I am suddenly about to be pounded by thugs I would have avoided if I knew they existed.”

Ichigo nodded with a frown. “Just as long as you know that I can’t tell you everything as you do not have the Takamagahara seal of access,” Ichigo told them. “But you’re right, you do deserve to know the general situation so you can react accordingly.”

Orihime beamed as Tatsuki leaned against the roof door. The martial artist wondered how much the story was going to change after the three left.

“The quick version is this,” Ichigo said plainly, eyes bouncing back in forth between Ishida and Kuchiki; neither of them looked terribly pleased. “Kuchiki-san is under my protection until further notice. I was injured when the power under her command called ‘Sode no Shirayuki’ slipped from her control when one of the things I was supposed to be keeping an eye out for when she had a chance to inform me attacked her while we were talking and  I had to act in her stead. Since her power is Yuki-ona ice based, it took a while for my power, which is more closely aligned, at the moment, to spring and summer Kodama, to adjust to the shock of being caught in the ice based energy.

“The long version,” Ichigo continued as Kuchiki seemed to relax some though she still seemed to eye him oddly. “Kuchiki-san is from an isolated village in the north, near to where Shiranui-sama and Sakuya-hime are going to be later in the summer. The large majority of the people in her village have special abilities tied into the local kami powers. Her school’s master, Ukitake-san, was worried over her safety after his second and his wife, Shiba-san, were killed by an unknown monster that Kuchiki-san was able to kill more out of luck than skill. Because this was only one in a series of odd monsters, Ukitake-san wanted Kuchiki-san out of danger; like in witness protection. Because her brother has a close friendship with the kodama of their sakura grove, he contacted Sakuya-hime and Shiranui-sama offered me as a form of protection. Kuchiki-san only arrived last night with her letter of introduction when one of the monsters that followed her dropped in. It had the ability to disrupt the energy flow of anyone it hits so rather than a column of ice that froze the monster, there was a wave of ice that got me too. Adrenaline kept me up until after we killed it, at which point I passed out.”

“So, you are okay now, right?” Orihime asked, her voice a little brighter than it had been.

“Another night of sleep and I should be fully recovered,” Ichigo agreed. Orihime beamed happily though Keigo spoke before she could.

“So how do we know if we are being chased by one of these things?” Keigo asked, shaking with a reasonable level of fear.

“While I doubt they are creatures that will take notice of you yet,” Ishida explained. “They wear masks and have holes in their chests.”

“If you can see them and they refuse to remove their mask,” Ichigo continued, “or do not identify themselves when you ask as a kind of Tsukumogami, assume that they are one these creatures. We should have a couple of days as a grace period where I’ll be setting up some warded areas to act as safe zones around town so people can run to them if they are being chased, but the local Yokai are presently making themselves more present than the police force is normally so praying out loud to any of the kami for the area or one of the major deities should get you aid before they return to their normal level of vigilance.”

“So they Yokai are presently doing ‘Neighborhood Watch: Yokai Edition’ like most quiet areas do after violent crimes?” Mizuiro asked.

“Pretty much,” Ichigo confirmed. “Good thing about beings with strong territorial instincts is that they are very thorough in finding things that do not belong.”

“Are they covering Naruki City?” Keigo asked, reminding Tatsuki that he actually lived in a different city from them all together.

“The whole of Shiranui-sama’s territorial domain is under heightened watch, which includes Naruki City,” Ichigo confirmed again. Keigo sighed with relief while the Celestial Envoy continued, “The rest of the details are confidential, though, so if you all could go over there while we talk specifics and strategy….”

“Of course,” Mizuiro sad calmly as he started walking towards the far end of the roof. “Come along, Asano-san, Inoue-san.”

The five remaining teens watched as the three others got out of earshot, talking amongst themselves happily. A few moments passed before Sado-kun broke the silence. “I thought that fallen souls were not something we needed to directly concern ourselves with?” he asked lowly.

“Going to have to,” Ichigo said with some unease, motioning to the transfer student. “Rukia-san is the newly assigned Shinigami patroller for Karakura. When she got injured last night, she tried to pass along enough of her power for me to wield her Zanpakutō, Sode no Shirayuki, like she’s supposed to but instead of jumping across a small fissure to solid ground and then jump back across, I now have a Yuki-ona type weapon stuck in my soul.

“Of which,” he continued, his attention focused of the transfer, the Shinigami, “Shirayuki-san apologizes for giving away so much confidential information, especially since I did not inherited Nejibana, but my lawyer wanted to be sure that you were not directly responsible for last night and made me press her for more details. Though the information we got from her made us think that what happened to your fukutaichō was possibly related. I mean, this was supposed to be a safe assignment.”

“That’s alright,” the Shinigami said with a down casted look. “I’m just glad she is alright. I can’t believe I did not notice that my reiatsu control was affected before this happened.”

“My Dad pointed out it might have been an act of Shiranui-sama as she had been evoked by that time,” Ichigo added, looking even more embarrassed than before. “Part of my contract with her is that I would always have the means to protect myself, and until you passed over Sode no Shirayuki, I did not have the means to properly defend myself from the Hollow.”

“If I may ask,” Ishida interrupted. “What exactly is it that is making these Hollows different to be of note?”

“The one last night had regeneration comparable to a Menos class Hollow in addition to its ability to disrupt energy flow, and I could not get a fix on how much strength it actually had,” Ichigo answered. “The one that killed her fukutaichō, the second strongest in her entire division, invaded his body and started to eat him from the inside after breaking apart his Zanpakutō.”

Tatsuki grimaced with disgust even as Ishida adopted a stricken look and greened a little. “My condolences, Kuchiki-san,” Ishida said honestly, almost as though he was surprised at himself for feeling that way. “I suppose you killed it before it completely succeeded?” At her weak nod, he continued. “I think you gave your superior a commendable favor by ending it cleanly. Being purified by Zanpakutō is the only thing I can think of to remove such influences from a soul cleanly, as much as I am to loath to admit it.”

“How do you all know so much?” Kuchiki-san asked. “Mortals aren’t supposed to be involved in the affairs of Soul Society.”

“We usually end our involvement with the dead with the wellbeing of normal ghosts that have recently died,” Tatsuki answered, opening her lunch box. “It is hard for us to ignore them entirely because all four of us can see ghost clearly, now. We usually just work with Yokai, though, for the exact reasons you said.”

“I’m more concerned with how the Hollow got near enough to damage your house, Ichigo,” Sado-kun pointed out as he did the same.

Ichigo grimaced and pulled out some items from his backpack. Tatsuki realized that they were three of the warding ofuda that he used for his home and the schools. “These are one from each of the ward from my home, the girl’s school, and here. I assume that this is also the case for the Hospital, Uryū-kun, but I was already going out of my way to get here by stopping by to see Karin and Yuzu first to stop and check there.” Ichigo flipped them over so that bulk of the omamori warding was visible. Tatsuki inhaled sharply at the revealed sabotage.

“Is that the portion that actually wards away dark spirits?” Sado-kun asked, eyes narrowed with controlled anger.

“Yeah,” Ichigo said with a dissatisfied frown. “I’m going to have to make a completely different ward scheme now. This design was picked because it is strong for its relatively simple design. The major flaw was exposed in this event.”

“How do we know that the Shinigami were not actually involved with this,” Ishida asked, giving Kuchiki-san a suspicious look.

“I can’t say that there was not a Shinigami involved,” Ichigo answered. “But Sode no Shirayuki is a part of Rukia-san’s soul and is in a position where lying to me is rather impossible without my knowing. She says that they were preforming their duties as they were taught to do so, so I believe that is what Rukia-san was doing, and by doing so, gave me enough time for me and my family to act and not be caught by surprise and killed.

“You should also note that, as far as Soul Society is concerned, Rukia-san is a commoner born, heir by default through sibling adoption of one of the highest ranked noble families in a feudal system closer to how it was two hundred years ago,”  Ichigo continued after Ishida gave a derisive snort. “This could be purely politicians gone stupid and either did not really know what we stood for, or hoped to direct Shiranui-sama’s anger at either Rukia-san or at the Kuchiki clan on a greater whole. We going to have to do all we can to investigate from here.”

“What if they, whoever they are, were targeting you specifically and Kuchiki-san’s interference was unexpected,” Tatsuki asked, stating what she thought should have been obvious.

“That is how the yokai perceive this and are perusing that front,” Ichigo said. “Until then, if you are confronted by a Hollow, Takamagahara will cover any defeat or destruction of said Hollow as a necessary means to defend its interests. I do ask that you give me an opportunity to purify them as a Shinigami would if at all possible to maintain status quo as much as possible.”

“Roger.”

“Hm.”

“Just know that if you are lagging to an unacceptable level, I will make full use of my skills, regardless,” Ishida aquested grumpily.

“You will likely be handed more of the jobs that you will actually get accessible money from with my being more unavailable to perform the Shinigami duties,” Ichigo pointed out.

“As long as my buttons do not get eaten, I believe we are at an acceptable compromise,” Ishida said, changing his tune quickly at the prospect of having more relatively easy (or at least, fun) jobs for a better than average pay. Most people do not get asked to take items of seemingly junk value across town (or prefecture) for the equivalent of a few hundred dollars. Not that it was always as easy as that; but Tatsuki remembered the look of pride on Ishida’s face a couple of weeks ago when, armed with a normal bow and arrow, Ishida had been the one to force a crow tengu to drop a stolen hoshi-no-tama by startling it with an arrow through its flight feathers when it had successfully dodged Ichigo’s own attempts at knocking it out with Tenraifude techniques.

“Do you really have a heavy work load as a Celestial Envoy?” Kuchiki asked after a while of eating, when the others were waved back over, signaling the end of the classified discussion. “My family is not unaware of the Celestial Envoys, but I do not think any of us have actually encountered one for over a thousand years so the basics are we really know.”

“We probably do more than the proper job description,” Ichigo confessed. “But a lot of the yokai are unsatisfied with the current situation with the human’s casual disregard of their existence and a lack of proper priests. Having a group of humans that acknowledge their existence and work to sooth the tension between them and humans, even if it is just having the opportunity to order some humans around, has boosted general moral of the whole nation’s yokai population.”

“It helps that you have a success story that made national headlines,” Mizuiro pointed out. Ichigo just shrugged.

“Sorry for my ignorance,” Rukia said politely. “But we do not always get the same news back home that you do most everywhere else. What headlines are you talking about? Or is this about the Nogitsune that you were talking about earlier?”

“That is quite alright, Kuchiki-san,” Mizuiro said happily with a light flirty tone. “It happened a few years ago; everyone in Western Tokyo remembers it well because it affected urban development of the Tama hills area.”

“There was a plan for a large development to be built in an area to the south east of here that would clear out the majority of the rest of the flatland forests in Western Tokyo,” Orihime picked up. “But the Tama Hills are home to the large majority of Kanto yokai; most prominently, the majority of the Tanuki clans.”

“The different species were not organized together,” Ichigo continued, adding his insight of being a participant. “But Shiranui-sama eventually got requests from the large majority of the different populations when they heard that she had taken me on as a human student and representative even though the majority of the area slated to be torn down still was outside her territory. With Karakura and the surrounding areas already developed except for the mountains that already have their own long standing population, she could not offer sanctuary to the would be displaced yokai, so she requested and was granted my becoming the Celestial envoy of Takamagahara in order to have me act in her stead outside her territory. As I was just beginning to learn from her, I was mostly just used as a mouth piece to the media and other human organizations. It just stuck afterwards.”

“Eventually there was a big wildlife preservation protest and a Ghost Parade with all of the illusion casters trading off to make cool tricks,” Orihime added exuberantly. “Some of them even made a Gundam illusion! It was so cool!”

“Eventually, between the human protesters and the acts of yokai that politicians did not want to openly acknowledge but had no evidence to pin it on the protestors, the greater majority of the remaining Tama Hill forests was turned into a wildlife reserve and nature park,” Mizuiro finished as the warning bell for the end of the lunch period rang and everyone hurried to finish their lunch and pack up.

“In short,” Tatsuki said as she opened the door to go down stairs, “There is a greater demand of people like us than there is a supply so we can get busy easily. We are even working on becoming a legitimate business.”

“I see,” the secret Shinigami said brightly. “I’ll do what I can to not burden your work to much with my presence.”

 

* * *

Urahara Kisuke, former Shinigami Captain and R&D President, swung his cane that was a sword as he easily dodged the ‘sane people’ on the street. Really, what made them sane for not seeing thing that went on in front of their noses was beyond him. Then again, even other Shinigami seemed to think he was crazy and they could see the same things he did. Perhaps there was more to the genius’ getting along with his Tanuki and Kitsune clients (oh the wonders of knowing where to look for a demographic to sell to) than he did with many other people than he originally thought. Oh well, there was so much to be happy over, Kisuke just _had_ to come by and tell his dear friend.

Stopping in front of the Kurosaki Clinic, Kisuke hummed to himself before going past the entrance to look at the hole in the wall. Or at least what should be a hole in the wall. “Oh my,” the genius gasped breezily. “I was told that there was a terrible accident that happened here, yet all I see is a couple of grooves in the ground. Hardly the sight of terror I was told to expect.”

“We cleaned up most of it last night,” the wall answered serenely. “Are you a friend of Kurosaki-sensei, Shinigami-san?”

Kisuke blinked at the wall, hiding his surprise. He knew the wall was a Kitsune; somewhat hard to miss now that he knew what to look for. He also knew that, despite his measures to hide from Seireitei, they did not prevent a Shinigami of his power to hide what he was from masters of transformation. Never had one assumed that he was friends with the Kurosaki’s, though. “What makes you say that, Kitsune-san?” he asked in the same breezy tone.

“You can drop the act, Urahara-san,” the former captain of the tenth said from behind the ‘wall’. “Apparently healing Kido leaves a telling energy signature that prooves the user to be from Soul Society if you know how to look at it. As far as the Kitsune are concerned, I’ve ousted my secret myself.”

Kisuke allowed his face to drop to his more normal look of solemn resignation. “So, your son knows then?” he asked heavily, leaning against the part of the wall that was actually a wall.

“Not yet,” the other man sighed with the same weight. “They seem to be willing to let me hang myself or regain enough power to do a show and tell. Whichever comes first.” The wall rippled and the dark hair of the other man popped through the wall. “You might as well come inside. We are only hearing each other because I’ve asked this guy to, so it’s private enough.”

“Ah, but I was going to take you to lunch if were free,” Kisuke fluttered, snapping his fan open as he did so.

Isshin gave the other man a look that said that they both knew that meant that the mad genius did something more mad than genius. “Sure, I guess,” Isshin grumbled. “I’ll see you out front.” Kisuke snapped his fan shut as the other man’s head disappeared back into the house and walked calmly back around the building. It did not take long for the two former captains to be strolling down the street. They both side stepped into an alley where Kisuke grabbed Isshin securely and flashed them away.

“Now that we are well and truly secured,” Isshin said dryly when they were sitting in the genius’ home, a cup of tea being set in front of him by the former Kido corps commander. “What did you want to tell me?”

“I put the Shinigami and hōgyoku into an untraceable gigai,” the former twelfth division captain said bluntly. “If I’m right, Soul Society should think her becoming human a result of her bouncing off a Celestial Envoy. Ichigo has the authority of Takamagahara pretty much whenever he wants to, so it is more than believeable. Everything that we have regarding the interactions of Takamagahara and Seireitei says that the sōtaichō will not risk getting them angry and should order Shinigami to steer clear.”

“The girl is a Kuchiki,” Isshin argued. “This is not just going to go away that simply.”

“Perhaps not,” Kisuke had to agree. “But with hope, most of the problems will be dealt with in the political arena of the Central 46 and not with us.”

“Since when are we that lucky?” the dark haired man grumbled.

Kisuke eyed the man carefully behind his fan. “Do you already know something that would make this ineffective?” the scientist asked.

“Ichigo was able to talk to the girl’s Zanpakutō,” Isshin told him not unkindly, but not too gently either. “Managed to get quite a bit, actually. The girl is already a part of the conspiracy, if an unwilling participant. She was there when the bastard got my cousin; put him out of his misery before he could do more damage. Ichigo linked that to the girl having had heard rumors of other strange Hollows to the one last night and knows that last night was a deliberate attack. He just can’t get a fix on the intended target.”

Kisuke contemplated that for a minute. The Kurosaki boy might not be a genius in the same way that Kisuke was, very few could boast that feat; but he was a highly intelligent individual if not a genius in his own right. Definitely more a kinetic learner than a scholastic learner like Kisuke. Most assuredly one of those individuals that would have military leaders slobbering over each other to get with his combat intuition. Certainly could be more refined, but, even by human standards, Ichigo was young and the outline of his learning was broad enough that if he got dropped into a hotspot he would survive to learn from it with more than just guts. Honestly, Kisuke wished he could claim that eventual gem of combat prowess if only to have the right to shove it into the government of Soul Society’s face. Unfortunately for the genius’ dream of lording it over the ass-hats that made up the Gotei 13 and Central 46, Kisuke knew that if asked, Ichigo would claim the honest answer of it being Shiranui-kami (and maybe that police man the teen had a tendency to follow around when supernatural ran into mundane life) rather than a sad example of a scientist no matter if he begged. Perhaps he could teach him some scientific theories relevant to Soul Society? Too bad his conscious would not let him try to claim kido training from Tessai.

There was one thing for certain though; if Ichigo was working this like a detective would, the chances of Aizen being dealt with before things got worse just shot up exponentially, Kisuke’s plans be damned. “What was his take on Kuchiki-san?” Kisuke finally asked.

“Thought she was being trained-to-be-arrogant Shinigami when she appeared until he realized that she was panicking and not being arrogant,” Isshin answered. “He has determined her presence and insistence to check the wards the as only reason why everyone is still alive and, in turn, is making sure every Yokai in the area knows that she is under his protection. One of the sparrows that had been hanging around since last night offered to take word up to Takamagahara and Shiranui-sama, so the higher ups should know by the middle of next week at the latest. Everyone is to be vigilant otherwise. Kiko-san mentioned something about a notice board somewhere, but I don’t know what exactly was supposed to be on it.”

“Well,” the genius said finally, “I’m thinking I should start planning things out with your son from now on. Think of what we could accomplish if we actually collaborated our plans? Even without communicating with each other, Ichigo-kun improved upon my plan. ‘Show us what is rotting or else’ rather than ‘Back off or die’. Much more effective for rooting out traitors.”

“What are you going to do about the Hōgyoku?” Isshin asked. “Ichigo is going to be looking for a way to return the Zanpakutō to Kuchiki-san so she can return to Seireitei. If it is still there…”

“I’ll just remove it before she leaves then,” Kisuke said easily, waving away his friend’s worry. “I’ll let her know that if she returns the gigai before she leaves she can get some of her money back. She has already placed an order for a gikon, so I’ll let her know when she picks it up. Then it’s just a matter of ‘oops, something seems to have stuck to you, give me a moment please’ and everything should be cleared up.”

“They’ll know where we are,” Isshin persisted.

“As I said, your son is a Celestial Envoy for Takamagahara,” the scientist continued in his airy, confident tone. “Who’d be moronic enough to get a lynch mob of angry Kami directed at themselves?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am going with the theory that Urahara put the Hogyoku into Rukia when she came to Earth. I cannot see how he would have gotten it in her before that point like a number of people seem to claim.
> 
>  
> 
> SPOILER RANT!
> 
> DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE RECENT CHAPTERS OF BLEACH AS IT WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS!!
> 
> so, I guess that explains how we went form 'should be awesomely powerful' to 'wtf? how did she die then?'. I suppose it is an acceptable reason.  
> I'm betting that Ishida was approached by the Stein Ritter while Ichigo was still powerless and had agreed to whatever they offered as insurance for their protection. that failed. I mean did you see that face at the end? that is a 'Crap, why am I here? This is completely pointless' or a 'I am here under extreme duress, burn in hell, ass hole!' look.  
> As far as this story is concerned, I'm still going with protection 'what child, there is no child here' spell than 'and then my asshat of an ancestor totally stole my power at the totally wrong moment'. I'll explain in more detail when I get to the part of the story that goes 'And your mother is a Quincy.'  
> This has, however, encouraged me to go ahead and write an idea of a story that pretty much ends with Uryuu and Ichigo trolling everyone. To my amusement if no one elses, so keep an eye out for it. (Originally, I was trying to make it mysterious and serious, now I just want the moron whipped, even if it Mary Sue my fav characters in something more cracky).  
> Till next time.


	6. Waxing Crescent: 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Humans gather together in times of danger. The reprise is ending.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is so late, I had some writers block on how to get to Acidwire, which is next chapter. Mostly I am just getting the last of the characters that you can't straight look up someplace else. The only significant OC so far is Kiko, all others are borrowed from somewhere else.  
> However, because of my trouble getting this writing down, I feel that this chapter is not up to my usual standard. Good news is that I think I finally found a Beta! So I should start being able to update my chapters with edits at least.  
> Message me if you want to guess where the expys are from!

# Chapter 5: Waxing Crescent 2 (三日月)

 

 

“I was not aware that Celestial Envoys were wanted so much,” Rukia said after the classes for the day ended and she followed him to the classroom that the calligraphy club used. “I mean, I know that they are important; Yamamoto-sōtaichō was a Celestial Envoy in life. That was the reason why he pushed for the creation of the Shin'ō Academy because he knew what having an organized center for military education did for the success of the mission. But he had gotten called because demons were moving over Japan and he was already successful as swordsman and commanding domain forces.”

 

“They still teach that to the Shinigami?” Ichigo wondered. “Most people alive now-a-days do not know what it means to be a Celestial Envoy even if you try and bring up well known mythological and historical figures. Granted, a lot of the stories have been corrupted over time….”

 

“The academy does not go into great details about history; I don’t think that the Celestial Envoys are even properly mentioned in the curriculum,” Rukia amended. “But the Kuchiki clan is entrusted with the history of Soul Society. It is a part of my duties to at least have a greater grasp on history than the average Shinigami. It just took me the night to remember where I had heard about the Celestial Envoys. And what I remembered is that they were only called in times of crisis.”

 

“That is true for Takamagahara Celestial Envoys and Envoys of Takamagahara’s equivalents,” Ichigo agreed, “where our duties are passing word to the rest of the hapless mortals about the establishment of what amounts to being celestial martial law; and aiding in the organization of said hapless mortals in that situation. Being an Envoy of a minor or individual kami or the like is probably the equivalent to being declared a prophet in some of the other religions and is much more common. We often do not have reason to draw a lot of attention to ourselves and can live unnoticed. The Tama hills ‘Tanuki War’ could have been considered a dire enough situation to bend the rules to let me have the title for the duration in order to make the will of Takamagahara better known to the masses as the Emperor was not having much luck in the political arena and Shiranui-sama is well liked in the region. The thing about that is that the title stuck; which is odd because I have not met with any of the kami who can directly declare me Takagamahara’s Celestial Envoy which is usually a requirement.”

 

“Has it caused you a lot of trouble?” Rukia asked, genuine curiosity in her voice as Ichigo opened the door to meeting room.

 

“The fact that he has shown up to school when he should be resting? Or some other problem?” a stern and slightly irate female voice asked from within the classroom. Ichigo cringed slightly as he looked into the eyes of his club president. Hamasaki Suki was a third year at Karakura high; originally the youngest child of a poor family of fishermen, the majority of whom died in a typhoon a few years ago while she and her mother were at an interview for a scholarship for an advance junior high in the Tokyo area. Not long afterwards, she and her mother moved to Karakura with Hamasaki-sempai giving up the advance school in order help her mother out with work and home, using her genius intellect to coast in the top of her class with little effort to give her time to work. Calligraphy is probably the only form of fun she indulges in and takes it very seriously.

 

“I wasn’t the one who designated myself the Secretary position, Sempai,” Ichigo argued. “I just wanted to get better at calligraphy.”

 

“He presents a fair argument, Suki-chan,” said Joshi Amarasarit, third year and close friend of Hamasaki-sempai since they met their first year of Junior high. Joshi-sempai’s family was originally from India and her parents managed their modest (by comparison) Japanese branch of the family business. She served as the club’s Treasure.

 

“And dishonor ourselves by not giving a position to Shiranui-sama’s direct subordinate?” the vice president, Suzuki Aya, interrupted. Her family had been construction tycoons up until the Tama Hills incident that led to the intersecting of internal audits being performed by her parents crossing the paths of external audits being performed by the government. The audits revealed that her uncle, the C.E.O. of the company at the time, had been embezzling and losing money of the company in gambling debts and had been banking on the continued development of the Tama Hills to cover this up. Her uncle eventually committed suicide, leaving control of the business to another member of the family. Her family, relatively conservative when it came to spending in the first place (except for her now deceased Uncle), began refinancing into other areas resulting in Suzuki-sempai leaving her ‘privileged’ school and spending the rest of her junior high school education in the same class as Hamasaki-sempai and Joshi-sempai. Ichigo thought there might have been a fourth member in their clique during Junior High, but he heard that there was some sort of argument between the four during their last year that resulted in the fourth deciding to go to a completely different high school altogether. “I do not think we could survive the shame of it.”

 

That was one of the frustrating things about Ichigo’s three sempai; they were close to being rabidly devoted to Shiranui-sama. That probably fails to paint the correct image of their devotion as they were not pious, or even had a proper sense of faith in kami. If Shiranui-sama had a rock band, then Hamasaki-sempai, Joshi-sempai, and Suzuki-sempai would be one of those band groupies that followed the band wherever they went, owned every piece of paraphernalia that they could acquire, and likely get restraining orders placed against them. This quirk of their personality was not readily apparent; they had too much of a proper work ethic and pride in their own abilities to allow themselves to degrade to that point. It did not stop them from coveting Ichigo’s presence like a precious idol of their beloved kami of the brush (who was a very much flattered kami at such blind devotion). If they were all Christian, Ichigo would say they looked to Ichigo as though he was the second coming of Christ. Thankfully, their reactions usually bounced between mothering and fawning as though he was a noble they were responsible for grooming rather than anything sexual. That would just be creepy.

 

“Shiranui-sama would not have felt insulted by my being placed in a position more reflective of my skills in this discipline and my ability to devote my attention to this establishment,” Ichigo countered.

 

“That does not change the fact that we were told you would be absent due to illness,” Hamasaki-sempai stated firmly as the rest of the club filed past into the classroom. “It is rather evident that you are not fully recovered.” Looking down behind him, the club president spied Rukia. “And this would be?”

 

“Kuchiki Rukia, pleased to meet you,” she said with a formal bow.

 

“Ah, the fabled transfer we have heard about,” Suzuki-sempai drawled, managing to make it seem like she was looking down on the both of them even though she stood not much taller than Rukia and much shorter than Ichigo. At least her words proved that Mizuiro’s skills in rumor spreading were still top notch. “Does Shiranui-sama having sent you here a sign of your skill in the arts of the brush or just a damsel to counter balance our Kurosaki-kun’s dashing knight tendencies?”

 

Flushing and obviously atempting to not reacte negatively to the implied insult to her combat skills, Rukia bowed again. “I am afraid that my skills at the brush do not match up to my own Nī-sama, but a genteel propriety does not mean that I am unable to defend myself in my entirety,” Rukia countered. “Taking advantage of an opportunity to learn more from Sakuya-hime’s dear friend’s student is an offer only the truly foolish would turn down.”

 

Suzuki-sempai nodded with regal approval. “I am to assume that you are to shadow Kurosaki-kun as much as it is reasonable?” she asked in much kinder tone.

 

“Yes,” Rukia answered, taking the opening for what it was; a plausible reason for why she was joining the club even if it turned out her skills did not match minimum requirement for permanent membership. “As long as I am not being obtrusive with my presence.”

 

 “I am certain that will not be a problem,” Hamasaki-sempai replied. “Normally this would be the time we would ask you to create a basic piece of our choice while members discuss club business. Given the circumstances, however, I feel it more prudent that you ensure that Kurosaki-kun makes it home before he manages to harm himself further.”

 

“Yes, Sempai!” Rukia chimed with another bow. She grabbed Ichigo by his elbow and began to drag him out. “Have a good day, Sempai!”

 

Ichigo rolled his eyes as he let himself be dragged. “Bye Sempai. Bye Everyone.”

 

“Goodbye, Kurosaki-hisho!”

 

“Your club seems rather,” Rukia began when she let go after they made it past the gates of the school, “um.”

 

“Odd?” Ichigo filled in as he began walking. “Overbearing? Completely skewed sex ratio in favor of female?”

 

“Conservative,” Rukia settled on as she followed a half step behind the Celestial Envoy.

 

“Only on the surface,” Ichigo answered. “Once you stay a whole meeting you’ll realize that conservatism is only a front.”

 

“How so?”

 

“Thanks to the views of the Club council, everyone thinks that it is a badge of honor and achievement to be able to sense spirits,” Ichigo said dryly. “While I am pretty sure that they all had higher than average reiatsu levels before I met them, they have since decided that their level of reiatsu is proportional to skill with the brush, or vice versa, and have since began working on increasing their spiritual levels.”

 

“I thought that you said you were not that good at calligraphy?” Rukia questioned.

 

“Calligraphy? No I am not very good,” Ichigo agreed. “I’ve spent too much time focused on utility in writing rather than beauty and thought that this year I could branch out. I am very good at painting on a professional level, though. Not to mention that Shiranui-sama’s power was born out of the birth of writing in Japan and I was required to learn all about the making and use of brushes and paper.”

 

“Wouldn’t you have learned writing first?” Rukia asked. She frowned when she noticed the direction they were heading. “I thought we were heading to your home?”

 

“I learned to write, but I have always thought that the Tenraifude resembled ink painting rather than calligraphy, so I started with that as an extracurricular rather than calligraphy,” Ichigo explained. “Also, I wanted to head by the police station to talk to the Superintendent while he is in his office. Yoshida-keishi and his family are spiritually aware so I think it is prudent that I give him a heads up about my (hopefully temporary) branching out in terms of duties.”

 

“How many spiritually aware people are there in this town?” Rukia asked with a look of dawning horror.

 

“Human who can roughly detect spirits if they wanted to? About fifty percent of the generations still in school and twenty percent of those who have graduated high school,” Ichigo answered. Rukia blanched at that information but Ichigo continued. “Less than ten percent of those who can detect spirits can also see them to any degree of clarity. A large majority of those who do see them are either watered down but not too watered down humans of Yokai descent or otherwise willingly close quarters with Yokai and other reiatsu users. I am told that the majority of those are made sure to at least be taught how to detect malicious spirits like Hollows; though I can only be sure of those my sisters and I are friends with. Beyond that though, I can only guess beyond the three you met at school and a few others on how many can see Hollows like me and Karin. Then there are the Yokai and Hanyō who can also see ghosts most of the time, though they usually avoid human spirits as it risks crossing a line I’d have to push them back across.”

 

“Where do you get those numbers from?” Rukia asked faintly. “They are completely different than what I had been told to think.”

 

“Takamagahara,” Ichigo answered easily as they stopped at the bus stop. “Because the Emperor amounts to being the diplomatic representative between the Japanese people’s government and Takamagahara, both the Celestial and Terrestrial governments of Japan can compile their notes together with relative ease to get an accurate summery of details most people don’t know about themselves. Like how ninety percent of the population actually has some obscure percentage of Yokai in them.”

 

“Is this something that everyone can look at?” Rukia asked, still looking a little pale.

 

“No, though the last bit is something I thought was more than a bit of common sense considering how many stories there are of Yokai wives or husbands,” Ichigo answered as the bus arrived, Ichigo pulling out enough money for a day pass for Rukia as he pulled out his own bus card. “Have you gotten a bus pass, yet?”

 

“Oh, yes,” Rukia said, pulling out a pass. “Urahara-san got me one for a month, just in case. I’ve never been on one of these before.”

 

“Just copy what I do,” Ichigo said as he boarded the bus. Thankfully, it was just before rush hour so there were still seats empty in the back. “Anyways, those records are usually just kept out of normal information channels as it is one of the data groups legislature never bothered to put regulations on. If you’re friends with someone able to go to the Hall of Records the compiled survey is kept in, they can bring you back a copy without much problem. Who is Urahara-san?”

 

“He owns a candy shop,” Rukia answered, looking out the window with interest. “But he also keeps stock of items for anyone who may have gotten stranded suddenly.”

 

“Like you?” Ichigo asked as he kept an eye on the streets.

 

“Probably for others, too,” Rukia said. “But he does have some specialty items that I am used to getting from back home.”

 

“Huh,” Ichigo murmured to himself, allowing them to drop into amicable silence as he waited for them to get to the correct stop. When they passed the preceding stop he leaned over to Rukia and said, “If you want to, you can pull the string to signal for our stop.” Rukia was reaching over for the bell pull before he was finished speaking.

 

Getting off was slightly harder than it had been getting on as the rush hour was starting and there were more people to push by, but it still did not take them long to get off the bus and into the police station. Rukia followed behind diligently, an arm strategically raised slightly in front of her to keep from running bodily into Ichigo as she took in the sight of the station. The station was decent size as it covered Karakura town, Naruki city, and a couple of other smaller townships that made up the majority of Shiranui-sama’s domain in Western Tokyo. As a part of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, it was both very standardized and efficient. Most of the time.

 

“Hey, Bleach-head,” a rather bigoted detective, that Ichigo never bothered to remember the name of despite the man’s continued antagonism towards the teen, called out as the two headed back into the depths of the station. Ichigo thought he worked in the Narcotics division. “Got yourself a little prostitute, drug running, bitch now; have you?”

 

Rukia froze, all expression dropping from her face. “What did you call me?” she asked coldly. Ichigo grabbed her arm and attempted to bodily move her. “Oh, no. I’m not leaving until we finish our conversation with this _gentleman_. Now, what did you call me?”

 

“Not worth it, Rukia,” Ichigo said firmly. “He’s too stupid to remember this conversation in five minutes.”

 

“What did you say, you punk?”

 

“Gentlemen! Do not make me come out there,” called the chief of Narcotics from the break room, stirring a cup of coffee. Ichigo knew that he was good at his job, but did not know him that well as he had been transferred over here after Yoshida-keishi got promoted to head of the station eight months ago, so Ichigo did not interact with him often. He was an older man with a serious face who already commanded the respect of the station. Ichigo thought he was a retired Japan Self-Defense Force officer, but he wasn’t certain.

 

“Sorry, sir,” Ichigo replied sincerely, though it was more for bothering him than for what he said to the detective. “Is Yoshida-keishi still here, sir?”

 

“In his office.”

 

“Sir!” the detective cried out angrily as Ichigo dragged Rukia back to the stairwell up.

 

“Your words may mean more if-” the rest was cut off as the door to the stairs closed behind them. Rukia shook him off.

 

“Did you hear what he said to me!” she cried in outrage.

 

“Yeah, he’s an idiot,” Ichigo answered. “Gets something into his head and everyone else has to be wrong. Only keeps his commission because of his family, though he hasn’t had any merit raises or notations for promotions for a couple of years. The only thing he is good at is tracking numbers for tracing what are likely illicit deals, as long as he hasn’t formed an opinion before looking at the files. Yoshida-keishi is trying to convince him to transfer to any of the divisions in the Metropolitan Police that deals with embezzlement but from what I hear, he insists that he is better off where his is. I think that’s narcotics but I’m not sure.”

 

“How can you not be sure?” Rukia asked as Ichigo opened the door to executive level offices.

 

“Not really that good at names and faces,” Ichigo answered as he nodded to some of the officers noticed him. Eventually he made it to the Superintendent’s office and knocked firmly; waving a greeting at the secretary, who just smiled back before returning to her computer screen.

 

“Enter,” a muffled baritone voice called from behind the door. Ichigo opened the door and let Rukia enter before him before entering himself and closing the door behind him, the man behind the desk raising an eyebrow questioningly even as he waved them to sit in his rather comfortable chairs.

 

Yoshida Fumito-keishi, or rather, Superintendent Mathew Fumito Yoshida, former Captain in the United States Army, was a taller than average (as far as Japanese statistics were concerned) man in his early-forties of Japanese and American descent with mid-brown hair and dark eyes. Yoshida-san, that is, the Superintendent’s father, was the second son in the family, had ended up going to University in the United States and never left. He married his wife Alicia Yoshida nee Mathews, who was the only child of a rural farmer, and took over the Mathews’ farm where they proceeded to have their one son, Mathew (named to keep the Mathews farm in the hands of a ‘Mathew’ though that was subverted upon giving up his American citizenship), and four daughters. Yoshida-keishi ended up in Japan when he and his two friends joined the Army and got assigned to the Tokyo base. One thing led to another and instead of staying with the Army (where Ichigo heard he would have likely eventually become a general) Yoshida-keishi joined the Tokyo Metropolitan police. He might be a bit young for a Superintendent, but he is very good at managing personnel. His wife, whom Ichigo always thought of as Tomiko-hime, was confident that he would eventually become the Commissioner General of the whole force.

 

“The note on my desk this morning said that you had an exciting night, after I got home from the office,” Yoshida-keishi said pleasantly, leaning back. “Might have even been related to all the excitement last night that left me a wonderful pile of paperwork to go through today. Are you here to explain what that was about? Or are you here for another reason?”

 

“Ah,” Ichigo stuttered, rubbing his neck in embarrassment. “Sorry about the paperwork. And yes, I am here to let you know about what last night was about. Maybe not all of it, though.”

 

Yoshida-keishi hummed as he eyed the two of them, more Rukia than Ichigo. “The paper work I don’t have much a problem with,” the man said, his pleasant tone not changing. “The information I was given was more similar to a multiple prevention strikes rather than a disaster reaction, so hopefully this means that in the long run there will be less paperwork than if these problem nests were left to fester. Should I ask my wife if the kids wanted your family to come over for dinner soon?”

 

“It would give us more time to talk in detail,” Ichigo agreed, liking the fact that they worked with each other long enough that it was something easily offered. It helped that the first time the Superintendent saw Shiranui-sama when she was teaching him how to investigate problems in order to keep the peace in her territory, the man was able to see her divine markings and had asked flat out if the then pre-teen had thought he was funny for painting on the ‘dog’. Though it took longer than that to convince him that he was actually seeing what he was seeing. “But if you have the time, I can give you the basics now.”

 

“The day itself was quiet so I have some time now,” Yoshida-keishi informed him. “What appears to be the situation?”

 

“Kuchiki Rukia, here,” Ichigo began, gesturing to Rukia who was wavering between sitting stiffly and forced relation. “Is from a rural community in the north. Shiranui-sama asked me to watch over her while she was down here and help her when I could. Initially they were hoping that her coming down here to Shiranui’s territory would dissuade the guys giving them trouble from chasing her, but after last night, it is going to turn into ‘Get them before they get you’ rather quickly. As such, if you see me running around in traditional clothing, it’s probably best to wait till later to ask. Also, if you have a Yokai problem, it might be more prudent to call one of my friends for more expedient results as I cannot guarantee that I will be as available as I usually am.”

 

The Superintendent’s face melted from vaguely cheery to mildly serious, giving the smaller woman an assessing look. “How far up north are you from? Honshu? Hokkaido?”

 

“Far enough _up_ north that you will likely have a hard time getting any relevant files,” Ichigo told him dryly, gesturing towards the sky at up. “If they even kept files on this sort of crazy.”

 

“I’m sure there are some,” Rukia corrected. “But getting the daimyo-”

 

“Police chief,” Ichigo whimpered, pinching at the bridge of his nose in despair. Note to self, modern culture books when they got home.

 

“Right, Police chief,” Rukia amended as smoothly. “We just call him the Daimyo because he is very traditional. In any case, getting him to reveal those files for anyone but himself would likely prove futile.”

 

“I see,” Yoshida-keishi sighed, going boneless in a way that made Ichigo thought he was sharing the Celestial Envoy’s despair at the slip. “Anything I should know that I should pass on to the men? Or is this going to pretty much just go over everyone’s heads?”

 

“You know the fallen souls we normally just play ‘Whack-ofuda’ with so they go running the other way and hopefully end up in a happier place?” Ichigo asked carefully, knowing how much the older man actually despised the supernatural for making his life more complicated even if he was too practical to not to acknowledge it.

 

“What of them?” Yoshida-keishi drawled, sitting back up with his hands crossed in front of him to hold his chin.

 

Pulling out one of his ruined warding ofuda from his bag, Ichigo passed it to older man; trusting that he knew enough to recognize what that meant. From the narrowed eyes and severe frown that appeared as he examined them, the superintendent’s rather brilliant strategic and tactical mind sped to an accurate conclusion. “I’ll contact the officers who are a bit more superstitious around the district to check the other ‘safe zones’ though I fear that I may be putting in an order for whatever my mind comes up with in the next few days,” the Superintendent said firmly. “Ask your friends if they have any interests in any part-time jobs sorting through incoming case files. I have a feeling that if this is happening as an opening salvo, then it is only going to get worse from here and I would rather have as many chances to receive forewarning as I can possibly get.”

 

“I’ll ask though I cannot guarantee I can find anyone wanting to be in a police station,” Ichigo warned. “If Karin heard, she’d volunteer, but I’m just starting to teach her the more advance ofuda; I’m not letting her see crime scene photos.”

 

“If she shows up, I’ll give her a corner and tell her make me some combative ofuda,” Yoshida-keishi assured, handing back the broken ward. “I wouldn’t let my little sisters see some of the things I see for a living and they are full grown.”

 

“Is there anything else you need to know now?” Ichigo asked, packing up his bag again.

 

“Not at the moment, Kurosaki-kun,” the older man said. “I’ll have my wife call your father sometime tomorrow to arrange a dinner together.”

 

“Alright,” Ichigo said, standing up. Rukia followed his example and stood, giving a small bow. “Talk to you soon, Yoshida-keishi.”

 

The older man waved them out, already focusing his mind on the defense of his district. Ichigo couldn’t help but be relieved that he still had someone around that he could got to for advice while Shiranui-sama was out of town.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Rukia greedily gulped down the water in the bottle as she watched Ichigo, in his Shinigami spiritual body (his mortal body was lying unconscious in the shade of the nearby tree with their possessions, as though he was asleep), sparing against Ishida-san in a clearing of the nature park that was secluded from most humans. Apparently, Ichigo wanted to know if the ‘light saber laser deflection trick’ could work in real life if the sword you are using was made from energy. They had started off with Ishida-san making moving targets out of reishi (that had amazed the Shinigami, though the young human looked uncomfortable when she praised him) so that Ichigo could get used to swinging his new sword. While he did have some experience with wielding a sword, mostly the Celestial Envoy just knew enough to not slice his foot off by accident with a normal katana. Though how that compared to catching the bolts of reishi on the blade of his Zanpakutō, Rukia did not know.

 

The day began with a rather embarrassing stare down with the Kurosaki patriarch (Rukia had not thought that anything could beat out the night before when she was declared the fourth daughter of the Kurosaki family, after the twins and Tatsuki, and the grown man wept at the poster of Ichigo’s deceased mother) which ended with Isshin questioning Ichigo’s sexuality as he had not been overcome by teenage hormones at the fact there was an unrelated female sleeping in his room (closet). Ichigo ended up kicking him into the Tanuki that had taken over pretending to be their wall so they could retreat. Afterwards, though, Rukia decided that she should test the Celestial Envoy’s strike reflexes.

 

She decided to use baseball equipment, as it was blunt and had an automatic launching machine that even the twins, who had wanted to help, could use safely. After marking the baseballs (they ended up just being ‘outlines’ and ‘solids’ with Rukia being banned from drawing without some lessons from Ichigo), the girls launched them at random towards the orange haired teen. The teen had been consistently hitting and dodging the correct ones, so the Shinigami was going to call for a stop when Tatsuki (“Only Tatsuki to someone who I am likely going to be fighting alongside.”) had shown up with keys to the school athletic shed and turned the reflex test up to ‘hard mode’ as they started using three baseball launchers to make him dodge. By the time they got to lunch (and the twins left to go play with their own friends) Ichigo was hitting the majority of the correct targets and only being struck by one in five or so of the targets he was trying to avoid.

 

Initially, Ichigo had wanted to stop there, being exhausted from the earlier work out. However, with Sado, Keigo, and Mizuiro informing them, when the three high school students (even if Rukia was just pretending to be one) had called them, that the three teens were handling all of the Yokai requests without difficulty and Ishida arriving from his own personal practice; things did not go that way. From what Rukia had been able to interpret from the friendly bickering, Ishida had both wanted to see what the substitute looked like in Shinigami form as well as see if there was anything else he could do now that he had Shinigami powers. It was not a bad idea; with Karakura town presently being a dead zone for Hollow activity with the barrier around the Kurosaki home still frightening most things away, and the Celestial Envoy having been taught how to make and use the ancient paper seal version of the Konsō seal, there had not been a need to push the teen’s soul out of his body and inspect it. So the four teens went to the park and sparred.

 

While Ichigo was still getting used to swinging his Zanpakutō, Rukia had given out basic pointers that Kaien used to give her when she was still learning. Unfortunately for her, Ichigo was good at hands on learning and quickly by passed the basic skill level that Kaien always said was the point to switch to sparring to gain combat skill. That was when Tatsuki dragged her away.

 

“You guys might normally be samurai types,” the teenager had said with a manic grin that Rukia normally saw on the members of eleventh division. “But since Ichigo is currently stuck with your weapon, let me make sure your hand-to-hand is at ‘can survive a minor yokai and flee from the rest’ level.”

 

Rukia figured that it could not hurt her to get some of her own practice in, especially since she was in a confining gigai that hindered her movements, and agreed to the spar. She was wrong, it _did_ hurt her.

 

“I guess that wasn’t a _bad_ spar,” Tatsuki said after recapping her own water bottle. Humans came up the oddest shapes to their inventions. “But you obviously don’t fight with the expectation of a serious injury being dealt to you. Do you usually fill a medic roll within your division?”

 

Rukia shook her head in the negative. “No, not really; though I am proficient at healing. Sode no Shirayuki is hadō type Zanpakutō,” the de-powered Shinigami answered. “She enables me to freeze opponents and get around them. If I could show you her release form, it would make more sense.”

 

“No need,” the human martial artist said with a wave. Both glanced back over to the boys’ spar when Ichigo yelped in surprise. Ishida apparently having ended the experimentation period and started to use some sort of high speed movement technique to aim for openings that were harder guard; like one’s rear. “The fact that you said that you could ‘get around’ your opponents explains a lot. You always expect to be able to dodge either by your own skill or your Zanpakutō’s ability. If you know your comrades, you can work with them, but you expect them to be keeping your enemy distracted while you come around from the side. It is not a bad position; Ichigo will switch to that position depending on the scenario and Ishida-kun is most often in that role during practice scenarios with him being an archer, but even Ishida is taking close combat more seriously after Chad shrugged off one of his sparing arrows without issue and punched him in the face.”

 

Rukia blinked at the remark as she watched Ichigo’s speed increase to levels resembling early stages of shunpo. At least by watching the two teenagers spar Rukia knew why he probably did use that high speed movement the other night. “What do you mean by sparing arrows?” she asked.

 

“Kind of what it says on the tin,” Tatsuki answered. “Ishida-kun doesn’t use his full power in a spar; doesn’t really use his strongest arrows at all unless explicitly told to, and then refuses to do so at a living target. Good reasoning, too; fully powered, his arrow melted a metal target.”

 

Rukia gaped incredulously at the girl. “What! How did he do that?” she asked incredulously. “Do you know how hard it is to get Reishi to affect matter like that?”

 

“Really hard, from what I’ve heard,” Tatsuki agreed. “Apparently, if there were more of his clan around, Ishida would be considered a prodigy among them. Though it is impractical for him to use full power without someone to keep an enemy thoroughly distracted; there is some sort of an absorption rate to hold time that limits both how much reishi he can use at once and how long he can hold what he gathers safely. Not sure on the mechanics of it beyond that Ichigo can act as his equivalent of an endless quiver of arrows and that a really powerful shot takes a _long_ time to charge.”

 

“Isn’t all this training a bit excessive, then?” Rukia asked. “I mean, is there really the sort of trouble around that would validate your level of strength if you don’t fight Hollows?”

 

“In Japan, not so much,” Tatsuki answered. “While there is the potential for it, most yokai are happy enough with the status quo now that our group is actually filling one of the holes in the system. I’m pretty sure that Ichigo’s dream is to open an actual school or dojo to openly teach spiritual arts to both humans and those with strong yokai heritage. Bring awareness of the our spiritual neighbors back to our societies minds without our more, let’s call them eccentric, members of society from doing something horrible to them; which likely would need someone excessively strong at the head as a deterrent. Though, I have heard that Europe and North America have all sorts of supernatural trouble.”

 

“Really?” Rukia said with a frown. “I remember seeing reports that claimed that Hollow activity has dropped steeply over there within the past century.”

 

“Let me guess, Hollow activity has been on the rise everywhere else, though,” Tatsuki said rhetorically.

 

“Now that you mention it, yes, they have,” Rukia muttered to herself. “It is hard to spot because it is a relatively small area compared to the rest of the world. Have you heard what is going on over there?”

 

“Nah, not really,” Tatsuki denied. “Yoshida-keishi has family that lives over there and one of his friends ended up marrying a Kitsune before moving back to the States. It’s from her that we know that something weird is going on, but that the wards her clan helped her set up when she moved there seem to keep whatever the problem is away from her town. She thinks the oddness might be in part from the decay in spirituality that is far more advance there than it is over here; said that there was a creepy lack of spiritual influence beyond what she and her clan brought.”

 

“A lack of reishi would endear Hollows to look elsewhere,” Rukia thought aloud. “That doesn’t really explain the explosion in hollow population, though.”

 

“Well, all lot of people are still fighting even if the Cold War and all its associated mini wars are over.”

 

“I never heard of this Cold War,” Rukia admitted. “Was it fought at the poles?”

 

Tatsuki gave her a shocked look but answered anyways, “In a way, yes it was, but the Cold War more describes the political atmosphere at the time rather than the location. You haven’t heard of it.”

 

Rukia shook her head in the negative. “We usually don’t pay attention to Human wars or the causes of them because they are always happening,” Rukia explained. “We know that a little more than fifty years ago there was a major war that killed a lot of people worldwide, with so many at once, but that was because of the sudden inflow of souls from Earth rather than active intelligence gathering. It may just be that I haven’t been taught it because I am not a seated officer and it is no longer a crucial element of knowledge.”

 

“I guess you have a point,” Tatsuki admitted. “Ichigo claims that Shiranui-sama always complains that human governments keep thinking that she _should_ be nitpicking the globe when-”

 

Something resembling an explosion in both sound and reiatsu went off near them, making the girls jump. Looking around, Rukia realized that the boys were missing and that three trees (not terribly large ones, but not saplings) had been knocked over as though something rammed through them.

 

“What the hell?” Tatsuki yelled as she launched herself in the direction of the crash site. Rukia quickly followed, mentally frowning at the fact that she hadn’t completely caught her breadth yet. Despite not being as recovered as she thought she should be, both Rukia and Tatsuki easily cleared the debris on the trail of destruction.

 

At the end of the trail, the two young women saw Ishida, who must have followed using that high speed movement technique, steadying Ichigo; the orange haired teen giving empty heaves as he wavered back and forth. Even before reaching them, Rukia could spot the unfocused eyes and the rapidly bleeding scalp that signified a concussion.

 

“Ichigo, you idiot!” Tatsuki cried as she went and steadied her friend’s other side. “I know I always say you are more than a little hard headed, but this was _not_ what I had in mind!”

 

Crouching in front of the Substitute Shinigami, Rukia called a healing kido to her hands and gently held it out over where the blood seemed to be seeping from. “What happened, beyond the obvious?” Rukia asked the two teens.

 

“Ichigo seemed to be tracking and keeping up with me better than usual, so I was starting to use a faster Hirenkyaku than I usually use when I spar,” Ishida explained. “Ichigo was still keeping up rather well, but then it felt like there was a volatile reaction in his reiatsu. It ended up with him getting launched through the trees faster than I could track. If I hadn’t thought to toss some reishi strings around us and pull at his reiatsu when I first realized there was something wrong, I think he would have done more damage.”

 

“Cliff diving,” Ichigo slurred as he finally stopped swaying. His eyes were not focusing right, yet, but they were already improving and the bleeding had slowed. At least Rukia could still heal right.

 

Ishida nodded seriously. “Yes, you were right,” the archer admitted easily. “Looking into other uses of my clan’s techniques was worthwhile.”

 

“What does cliff diving have to do with that?” Rukia asked softly as she held her left hand in front of the orange haired teen and tested his tracking as her right continued to hold the kido. Severe head injuries were always a pain to heal.

 

“There are some cliffs near Shiranui-sama’s shrine on the way up to the Konohana Sakuya-hime tree,” Ichigo answered as he eyes slowly followed the movement, his voice still slurring some but it was far less scattered than it had been moments before. “Before they went out of town, Shiranui-sama and Sakuya-hime tested our teamwork by sparing with us to make sure we wouldn’t accidently kill each other if something happened. Sakuya-hime would grab us and put us in a penalty box thing if we did something that would result with us being killed in live combat. Tatsuki got knocked off the cliff; Uryū-kun thought that if he jumped over the edge after her and catch her with his Hirenkyaku, he could make it back out before she would be counted as out. But he just got both of them out.”

 

“I turned my back on a dangerous opponent who can attack at a distance,” Ishida huffed. “It was an important lesson to learn.”

 

“So your solution, in review, was to try and catch her with a reishi rope?” Rukia wondered. “That is a rather ingenious concept.”

 

“I had been more thinking of a reishi net,” Ishida corrected with much deserved pride. “But yes, it is; thank you.”

 

“Any chance you could teach me how to do this?” Ichigo asked. “I have some seals I can make that can help with the healing process, especially getting foreign energy or like things out, but not much for actual wounds.”

 

“I’m certain that it shouldn’t be much of a problem, if that explosion that happened when you were fighting isn’t going to be a regular occurrence,” Rukia said. “Do you remember what happened?”

 

Ichigo concentrated, eyes still not focusing at the same time but rapidly improving with all of the bleeding having been stopped. “I was trying to match Uryū-kun’s movement because I thought I might actually have the need to move that fast, now,” Ichigo began. “I mean, my reflexes are good, and I’m not a slouch on speed; but I never had been worried about enhancing my speed beyond normal levels. But I figure that if I’m going to be going after Hollows, I should try and get there as quickly as possible. Uryū-kun has proven that he can use Hirenkyaku to get across town rather quickly, so I thought I could give it a go of trying to match it.

 

“I thought I had it and so I pushed myself into the movement, which is when it went wrong,” Ichigo explained. “Something, wobbled, for lack of a better term. I tried to stop the movement and brace myself, but I was already passing through the first tree by that point. I thought spirits can go through solid matter?”

 

“Pluses can without any issue,” Rukia corrected, lowering her hand and ending the kido. “Other spirits can only do so if they are focusing on not being stopped by matter. Then the difficulty of it increases if the object you are passing through with as much life it has; it’s harder to pass through a living tree than a wooden house.”

 

“Oh,” the orange haired teen grunted as he stood to his full height and shook off his classmates. He was still a little wobbly, but the concussion was all but gone, now; enough so that it was probably better to let him sleep it off. “Noted.”

 

“Hello?” a feminine voice that sounded familiar to the Shinigami, though Rukia could not place where she had heard it before, called out. “Tatsuki-chan, Ishida-kun, Kuchiki-san, is that you?”

 

“Inoue-san.”

 

 “Orihime!” Tatsuki called out jogging back to the clearing. “Hold up, were heading back that way.”

 

“Is Kurosaki-kun alright?” Inoue asked. “I poked at him, but nothing happened.”

 

“Crap,” Ichigo muttered as he quickly jogged ahead, the wobble barely noticeable. Ishida’s lips twitched but otherwise he just followed calmly behind the other two. Rukia followed the other teens as well

 

“He’s fine,” Rukia could hear the lady martial artist assured. “He’s just doing a spiritual training thing. I can make him wake up, though.”

 

“Step on me and die, Tatsuki!”

 

Rukia caught up to them to see the brunette nudging Ichigo’s mortal form’s ribs with her foot as the substitute Shinigami was trying to slip back into his body. “Wakey-wakey, Berry-chan!” Tatsuki taunted.

 

Reconnecting with his body, Ichigo twitched and grabbed the loose pant leg of his friend, obviously about to berate the grinning teen, before his eyes cut towards Inoue with a frown. “Inoue-san, are you alright?” he asked.

 

“Huh?” The red head chirped in confusion. “Yeah, I’m fine. How could you tell I almost wasn’t?”

 

“What do you mean you almost weren’t alright,” Tatsuki hissed, forgetting everything else as she rounded on her friend and began inspecting her.

 

“Well, I went to the store to get food for dinner and snacks,” Inoue answered, gesturing to the bag with tuber ware. “I know you guys can get really hungry when you’re training so I thought you would appreciate something to eat, so I was going straight from the store and back home. I guess I didn’t pay enough of attention to the road because a car nearly ran into me; but I got out of the way in time! Somehow.”

 

“Somehow!” Tatsuki growled. She was crouching by Inoue’s side and gesturing at an ugly mark on her shin. “What is this!”

 

“Huh?” Inoue frowned as she pulled on her skirt to get a better look at her shin. “Oh, wow, I didn’t even notice that! Ouch, I wish I didn’t, it really hurts now.”

 

“Orihime!”

 

“Rukia-san, are you able to heal that?” Ichigo asked, eyes focused on the bruise like mark as he now kneeled in front of the red haired girl. Rukia wondered if the girl’s blushing even registered to him.

 

“Yeah, it should be no problem,” Rukia confirmed as she crouched down and started a healing kido.

 

“Hollow?” the Celestial Envoy asked under his breath.

 

“Yeah,” Rukia muttered in the same tone. “You sense it?”

 

“The injury, not anything else though.”

 

“It is a shame that the one who harmed you got away,” Ishida said over them. “I would have _loved_ to share my opinion of them to their face.”

 

“Nothing that you can do to track them down?” Ichigo asked as he stood. Dusting dirt off his body, he gave his glasses wearing friend a significant look. Ishida shook his head in the negative.

 

“If I had been there when it happened, maybe, most likely,” Ishida answered. “But there is not a way for me to do anything now. Its best if we just keep an eye out for anymore fools.”

 

“You don’t have to do that, guys! Really!” Inoue denied. “I just wasn’t paying attention to where I was going. Here,” she broke away from Rukia’s healing to grab her tuber ware and opened the top one. “Onigiri!”

 

“Normal fillings or one of your experiments?” Ishida asked suspiciously, pushing his glasses back up his nose.

 

“These should be the normal ones,” Inoue answered. “But the others only have chocolate peanut butter cups in them.” Ishida twitched a slight frown in disgust. Ichigo, however, looked interested.

 

“Does peanut butter really taste that good with chocolate?” Ichigo asked, an expression that said that he wasn’t sure he wanted to risk it or not. “I heard that it was becoming rather popular in the U.S. again.”

 

“I thought so,” Inoue said happily as she passed the opened tuber ware to Ishida, who shrugged and took one out, so she could grab the other box. “But the grocer said they weren’t selling well so I was able to get a whole bunch on discount!”

 

“I wonder why,” Ishida mumbled under his breath

 

“Is that going to be it, then?” Tatsuki huffed, crossing her arms with a pout. “No more worrying about air heads and moron drivers?”

 

“I guess so,” Rukia said as she stood. She grabbed one of the rice balls from the container Ishida was holding. He was still eating it, so she assumed it was alright. “There is enough of us that we can alternate watching her, if we need to. Does she prepare odd foods often?”

 

“Yeah,” Tatsuki said as she grabbed her own. “Until he died three years ago, it was only Orihime and her older brother, Sora, at home; her parents were not fit to raise them. There was a show up until a couple years ago called “Ironmen of Cooking” that Orihime is a big fan of. The chiefs were the top cooks of their field and would cook a whole bunch of odd food against challengers. Supposedly, the food they would cook tasted good because the judges liked their food, but some of it just seemed really weird. Since it was just the two of them, Sora had let her lead their cooking adventures; which ventured into the Ironmen territory or tastes in an attempt to mimic it.”

 

“As evidence,” Ishida said, lifting another onigiri out for him to eat, “she is a perfectly capable cook; but she because has a tendency to experiment with cooking and is limited in her funds, she will eat the bad results, too.”

 

“Do you like them?” Inoue asked eagerly as Ichigo chewed thoughtfully on one of the ‘experiments’. He didn’t immediately spit it out or swallow it quickly to get the taste out of his mouth, so that had to be a good sign, right? Must be, because he grabbed a second one; removing the seaweed wrapped around it before putting it in his mouth.

 

“It’s not bad,” Ichigo decided after chewing and swallowing the second one with as much consideration as the first, “more like a desert than a meal, though, so maybe sesame seeds instead of a seaweed wrap? The peanut butter is rather salty, too, so it does not need any more added salt. It might require you to hand make or custom order the chocolate peanut butter cups before they taste like they should for an onigiri. I’ll ask Yoshida-keishi if he knows of any peanut butter recipes you could use as a reference.”

 

“Really!” Inoue looked at him with bright, starry eyes. “Thank you so much!”

 

“Does he really not know that she has a crush on him?” Rukia whispered to the two teens after observing the exchange.

 

“Not a clue,” they said in unison.

 

“What clue?” Ichigo asked, giving them a suspicious scowl.

 

“The lengths your stomach will go for chocolate,” Tatsuki drawled, waving an arm at the two of them as if to say ‘for example…’. Rukia understood that she really pointing out his obliviousness even as his scowl deepened. “Sado-kun and I actually had to remind him multiple times not to accept the chocolate given to him last Valentine’s Day.”

 

“It’s free chocolate!” Ichigo protested. “Some of them did not even leave appropriate tags to identify the sender!”

 

“The rumor mill would have remembered them,” Tatsuki pointed out.

 

“Don’t worry!” Inoue said. “I’ll work on my onigiri recipe so that by next Valentine’s Day I can give you a box the day before so you can just eat one of them instead of being tempted to eat random Valentine’s Chocolate and have to give away white chocolate on White’s Day!”

 

“True friendship, Tatsuki,” Ichigo proclaimed wryly, wrapping one arm around the auburn’s shoulders, the other gesturing widely. “This is what true friendship looks like. We’ve known each other, how long, and you have never stuck up for my sanity like Inoue-chan has today.” Inoue looked exceedingly happy even as she blushed a bright red. Rukia couldn’t help but cheer her on from the silence of her own mind.

 

“Just because you’re an idiot treading close to the ‘too stupid to live’ line, doesn’t mean I’m not the perfect example of a friend,” Tatsuki countered. “Orihime, do you know what time it is?”

 

“Almost five, I think,” the auburn haired girl said. “Maybe later. Is something going on?”

 

“Nothing specific for me,” the martial artist answered. “I just need to drop by the Dojo sometime this evening. Mom had also mentioned making some food for you for me to drop by with.”

 

“You’re welcome to come by!” Inoue pronounced happily. “Do the rest of you want to join us? I’ll wait to try cooking with the bean jelly if you come!”

 

“We can’t,” Ichigo said apologetically, moving to pick up his equipment. “Yuzu wanted us both home for dinner and I want to start work on some ofuda that the police are ordering to help secure the government buildings. I can drop you off at your house, though.”

 

“I was going to work on my Calligraphy club entrance piece,” Rukia said to explain. Not to mention the books Ichigo had borrowed from the library for her....

 

“I was going to look through some of my clan’s books to see if they have any answers as to why that,” Ishida answered, gesturing at the felled trees, “happened during today’s practice. If we are disbanding now, I might have time to drop by later if I find the answer quickly. I cannot guarantee I will, though. I would leave a message for Sado-kun to see if he would like to come by, though.”

 

“Alright, I’ll call Sado-kun and ask him,” Inoue said brightly. “You don’t have to walk me home though, Kurosaki-kun.”

 

“He insists,” Tatsuki, grabbing Inoue by the shoulders and pulling her close, hissing into the auburn haired teen’s ear. “Let him walk you home.”

 

“Um. Okay,” Inoue stuttered. “Thank you, Kurosaki-kun. And Kuchiki-san, too.”

 

“Don’t worry,” Rukia said kindly. “We’re happy to do so. Right, Kurosaki?”

 

Ichigo looked at them with confusion in his eyes and a scowl on his face; intelligent enough to know he was missing something, but too dense to know what. “I wouldn’t offer to do so if I wouldn’t be happy to do so,” Ichigo answered.

 

“Men,” Tatsuki sighed.

 

“Don’t drag me into this,” Ishida said, setting the now empty tuber ware back into Inoue’s bag and grabbing his own bag. “Call me if any of you need anything. Otherwise I’ll see you with certainty in class on Monday.”

 

“Bye Ishida-kun!”

 

“Later, Uryū-kun.”

 

“I’ll see you later tonight, Orihime!”

 

“Okay!”

 

“Right,” Kurosaki said later when the three arrived at the auburn haired teen’s home. “You call one of us if there is a problem. Got it?”

 

“Yep!” Inoue cheered with a small salute. “Any problems and I call either you, or Ishida-kun, or Sado-kun and assume that Tatsuki is already on her way.”

 

“As long as we are clear on that,” he said with a sigh. He pulled out a small roll of ofuda from a pouch he had attached to his belt that morning in addition to his normal tools. “I know that you haven’t had much experience with these, but use these if you ever feel like you’re in danger. Even if you can’t actually see anything, okay?”

 

Inoue stared at the roll of ofuda for a moment before launching a quick hug at Ichigo. Before he could respond, Inoue had grabbed the roll of ofuda and ran into her apartment. Ichigo blinked in confusion and looked at the Shinigami.

 

“What just happened?” he asked. Rukia sighed in exhasperation and started walking in the direction she was sure was the way to get to the Kurosaki home.

 

“Men.”

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hisho-I believe this is the correct suffix for 'secretary' in terms of the council position. Let me know if I am wrong.
> 
> keishi- this should be the correct suffix for 'superintendent' in the Tokyo metropolitan police
> 
> daimyo- regional territory lords of feudal Japan. Similar to Counts, they often were the final authority/judge in the land and were the ones who arranged the patrols that policed the area. there are actually a lot of fun comparisons between the systems of these time periods and how it affected their country's development of their modern police force.
> 
> Konsō- 'soul burial', how shinigami get pluses to Soul Society.
> 
> Hirenkyaku- Quincy high speed movement technique, comparable to shunpo; works by the Quincy ridding on the flow of reishi as far as cannon is concerned. Will expand in story later.
> 
> onigiri-rice balls. can pretty much be rice+anything. to good or bad results.
> 
> Ironmen of Cooking is the literal translation of the original Iron Chiefs in Japan
> 
> Whites Day- in March, counterpart to Valentines day in Japan. Valentines Day: girls give chocolate to boys they like. Whites day: boys give (white) chocolate to those they accepted chocolate from. Usually accepting and giving chocolate is a sign of liking the recipient/giver
> 
>  
> 
> There are hints that Ichigo likes chocolate in cannon. As I am trying to make one of the divergences in Ichigo's character be that positive female influence (even if they were not really human) and having a noticeable improvement/confidence of his abilities has kept Ichigo from withdrawing completely, and so indulges in chocolate more than he would in cannon. Also, the Ichigo/Orihime is not a pairing I am pursuing. Ichigo, while not completely clueless to the opposite sex, is not interested in pursuing a relationship at this time. which is why only confirmed cannon parings (Byakuya/Hisana, Masaki/Isshin, Kagome/Inuyasha and what ever Gin and Rangiku have) will be covered in detail. I repeat, Ichigo/Orihime is only a side drama because it is cannon that Orihime has a crush on Ichigo which Ichigo is still oblivious to, and will not be pursued in this story.
> 
> Also I had been asked in a private message from DragonLord001 about the comparable power levels of shingami to yokai. the best answer I have is that Sesshomaru, one of the more powerful daiyokai, could probably do a Vendenreich style beat down to soul society, including taking out the same captains that the Stienritter took out before the Ukitake, Kyouraku, Unohana, and Yamamoto could team up and take him out. Inuyasha, a Hanyou child of a Daiyokai, could probably take down a division before being taken down. Most Yokai are probably closer to seated officer level, if even that. However, it would take a lot to convince them, or any other Yokai, to leave what they normally do to go up to soul society themselves in order to cause trouble since it would get Takamagahara on them.
> 
> Sorry that this is not my usual quality, I will be posting an edited version as my Beta (<3) gets back to me. This also means that my next chapter might be late also.... It shouldn't take more than three weeks, at least.


	7. Nightmare of Guilt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Guilt weighs on the soul even when one does nothing to warrant it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I am very late in posting. Sorry about that; Camp Nanowrimo started up so I was focused on getting things written, rather than editing. I hit a writers block, though so went back and edited this chapter, though it is not as thoroughly done as I normally do, so if you see a mistake or if something looks choppy, review and I'll make the correction. My Beta hasn't caught up yet. This was really hard to write because of Orihime.
> 
> I also wrote my head cannon for what the divisions do. Tell me if there is conflicting cannon information.

# Chapter Six: The Nightmare of Guilt (罪悪夢)

 

Ichigo wiped the ink from his Celestial Brush with practiced ease, laying it down on the fudeoki before leaning back in his chair and stretched. While the amount of warding ofuda needed were found to not be as great as he and Yoshida-keishi had first feared, all of the Karakura ‘safe zones’ had been found to have the same sort of tampering that the wards around his house had. While that meant the town was still relatively safe do to the proximity to the bubble of shinriki surrounding Ichigo’s home, it still gave the protectors of the district a troubling immerging pattern.

 

The safe zones, which were largely the police boxes, the food court of the local malls and a few other high density areas, were areas with a lower grade of wards than what Ichigo had used for his home, school and the Karakura hospital. Their story begins when Yoshida-keishi, before he got promoted, had learned that Ichigo had warded areas he his family were likely to be, got the budget committee for the police station to make wards apart of the yearly budget for the district. While the fact that Ichigo still sold his wards at a lower price than the average shrine did (and probably of a better quality even if they were not always as pretty) probably helped, it was really after some neo-pagan tourists managed to break a hole into Hueco Mundo three years prior that sealed the deal with the previous superintendent. While the only ones who were killed were the neo-pagans (Ichigo was told that the paperwork for those deaths was more than all of the other paperwork from the same incident) who were front and center when the Hollow tore through the convenient hole, there were enough civilians around who got injured before the Hollow was dealt with to start a panic in the media. The force only had a few with enough strength to actually wield combat ofuda like the Kurosaki and Yoshida families could, so the best option they could do was to offer the safe zones.

 

While there were still many skeptics that claimed that the wards were just a superstitious act of clueless law enforcement officers (even amongst the officers), there were enough people in the district who believed that there were more things in the world than what could be perceived normally to calm with that declaration. After all, they had already become hyper aware that there were Tanuki wandering around that were not dumb animals. The safe zones did not solve all problems, angry yokai were angry yokai, not necessarily evil or otherwise something that the wards would stop; but suspicious deaths that Ichigo would have declared supernatural (and probably from Hollows) dropped significantly enough afterwards for them to be renewed.

While after what had happened the other day already made Ichigo decide that he was going to create more safe zones with heavier wards, the fact that _all_ of the safe zones were down, no matter how weak, changed the whole game. Trying to make it so that no one in town was safe from whatever was happening? That quickly raised the threat level to something that actually would need a proper Envoy to handle.

 

While it was looking more and more like that sort of scenario, something felt off. Despite the destruction of the wards, whoever was orchestrating this chaos was not going about it the right way if they were targeting Shiranui-sama’s domain. If he was planning a large scale assault against another Envoy while the actual Kami of the region was out, Ichigo would have disabled the wards in the entire Kami’s territory or have multiple sectors disabled in different areas of the territory. Only one area affected declared the area where the most focus should be. Granted, it could just be that Karakura was the first area to be affected and Yoshida-keishi, his wife had informed the Kurosaki patriarch, was going to make sure his men treated it as such until this case was solved. But everything else was not matching up.

 

Why use Hollows? Was it an attempt to throw Ichigo off the trail because Shiranui-sama was involved in the living, even beyond most kami these days, and they thought he would not have the means to fight off Hollows? Or be distracted by the fact that actually combating a Hollow could potentially get him in trouble with Takamagahara and Soul Society? Did they have anything to do with those neo-pagans? The investigation of that incident had been declared an honest mistake as they had been attempting to communicate the shrine kami who was a human ascended into godhood and resided in Takamagahara. And why in Karakura now? That incident happened in one of the smaller municipalities further to the west. Karakura was the Eastern most town fully within Shiranui-sama’s territory.

 

If this wasn’t aimed at Ichigo and was instead of a political move by members of Soul Society, then why do something to bring it to the attention of Takamagahara? If they had just taken out the safe zones, Ichigo would have likely never had noticed. But sabotaging them all in such a way (not to mention the fact that the Hollow was aimed at _his_ family) meant that whoever this was _wanted_ Ichigo, or Takamagahara as a whole, involved in whatever this was. Which then begged the question of why they were putting this sort of effort in framing or killing Rukia? Certainly, a common born young woman being named heir by default to one of the largest clans in Soul Society would cause a stir in such a tradition society. But enough of one to warrant potentially getting Takamagahara going against the spiritual realm that they had supported and aided in founding? Kali of the Hindi Sects was likely looking for an excuse to crush something with the dubious peace time in India meaning that she wasn’t actually being invoked to kill or destroy something and was likely growing bored enough to offer her skills to Takamagahara without consulting them first. But considering the fact that she did have her own Underworld….

 

“Is there something wrong?” Rukia asked from behind. Turning in his seat, Ichigo saw that the Shinigami had moved to sitting on his bed cross-legged with a booklet on the psychology of the modern teenager in her hands with an open book of slang variations by region next to her. On the ground beside his bed was a square of paper with an inked kanji on it with the rest of the art tools properly put away.

 

‘Aside from everything else?’ Ichigo thought to himself as he stood. “Mostly just trying to puzzle out these seemingly conflicting theories and facts,” he said aloud. “It is looking more like it is by someone from Soul Society, though. How are your patrols set up?”

 

“Originally, there was a square of land of uniform size and shape and a Shinigami as required to patrol it,” Rukia explained. “However, after those two, World Wars was it? After the first and definitely during the second, the captains realized that the population centers had changed so much that one Shinigami could be in charge of a couple million souls spread out over miles with a large space of nothing in between the two areas making it nearly impossible to be productive. After that they made reforms so that the larger the population grouped together, the smaller the patrol area or more Shinigami assigned to the same area. There is a rumor that, with the Shinigami academy having increasing number of applicants each year, within the century there will soon be enough Shinigami to have two Shinigami on patrol in the same district as the rule not the exception.”

 

“How do you determine how the districts are divided?” Ichigo asked as he gently picked up the piece. Being a club council member, Ichigo had the power to determine if a person was skilled enough to join the club. He had picked ‘fuyu’ character for winter for Rukia to brush; it was both relatively simple for their club and Ichigo figured that it would invoke a good emotional response that would shine through the piece even if she turned out to be horrid at Calligraphy.

 

“At first I think the Twelfth and the Second division attempted to make a unique districts on the maps,” the Shinigami answered, still focused on the books in front of her, “but then a member of the Onmitsukidō realized that most countries kept records of both maps and population distribution and that a few of the human government buildings in Europe keep decent accounts of the other countries that don’t keep those records. Since then, the Second and Twelfth have just been overlapping their sensors and the information on those records to keep the information for the districts up to date and assign difficulty levels.”

 

“So you were assigned Karakura and someone else would have been assigned Naruki and the other towns?” Ichigo mused as he continued his inspection of the piece. “Why did you not just go find one of the other patrollers to contact your division to see if they could help after I went accidently trapped Sode no Shirayuki in my soul?”

 

“The other nearby districts are not assigned to the Thirteenth division,” Rukia explained. “The Tenth covers Naruki City and Seventh covers Hachiōji to the North. I think that Eighth covers the small villages in the mountains to the west of here while Second and Twelfth cover a number of the districts to the East of here where it is closer to the major information centers. I neither know who is currently assigned to those areas nor think that they would have much care to make sure the full situation to be explained. I mean, it is considered forbidden to give Shinigami powers to a human; but Celestial Envoys can be considered non-human enough to be exempted in certain circumstances. Honestly speaking, I do not know how many Shinigami know this rule, nor would purposely skew the facts to the y and discredit the Kuchiki clan.”

 

Ichigo stared incredulously at the Shinigami. “Why on Earth do they have different divisions all next to each other and then not have those stationed in nearby know who each other are?” the teen asked, aghast. “How are you supposed to work together in case of multiple districts crises?”

 

“Honestly, I don’t think the Captains thought of that,” Rukia admitted. “Not the crisis situation, but the different Shinigami not knowing each other. The Gotei 13 had been so small for so long that most people knew each other at least a little. But, in my generation especially, it is not uncommon us to only a few dozen people on sight of people outside your division and only your own division well enough to get their name right. While the Japanese Isles are more fragmented then most other countries both in part because of its high reishi properties, but also because Takamagahara has been Seireitei’s primary sponsor since the beginning, so there is a better effort to keep this area Hollow free, the rest of the world often suffers similar problems.

 

“But then each division has their own specialties,” the Shinigami continued. “The Thirteenth often have Shinigami with cross-combat skills with a leaning towards distraction tactics in order to make sure that an area is contained in the event that we encounter dangerous hollows with new types of abilities. Though admittedly, we haven’t had many group training sessions on division techniques since Kaien-dono died.”

 

“I wonder if your Captains would be insulted if I asked Shiranui-sama to get me permission to do a seminar with you guys over summer break in order to go over some modern joint-branch training methods,” Ichigo mused. “By the way, you Calligraphy really is good. I don’t know why you made it sound like you were completely unskilled.”

 

Rukia flushed slightly as she finally set the books aside and accepted the paper back. “Thank you for the complements, but I’m really not that good,” she said, demurred. “My brother is far better than I am.”

 

“If he was noble born, it is likely he was taught Calligraphy the moment he was determined old enough to hold a brush,” Ichigo declared. “That means at least a century or two of practice, right?”

 

“I guess you’re right,” Rukia agreed, still subdued as though she wasn’t used to being praised. Ichigo was glad that Japan had since moved from the feudal system, even if Shiranui-sama and Kagome-san had both mentioned that he would have been one of the few to be able to make a good and easy life for himself even if he was common born during the Feudal era, in spite of his unusual hair color.

 

“Just be mindful that the rest of the council (and therefore, the rest of the club) are likely going to think that your brother or yourself are actually descendants of one of the brush gods,” Ichigo warned, because really, it was only fair to warn people when they were walking into a room full of crazy people. “Hopefully they won’t do anything too embarrassing, but I can’t bring myself to trust them to that degree on this regard.”

 

“I’ll take that under advisement,” Rukia said dryly. “Was there anything else you wanted to know?”

 

“I guess just what you know of the other division specialties,” Ichigo said as he sat back down in his chair and pulled out spiral notebook that he had been using to keep notes on the investigation in and a pencil. The information he had received so far was beginning to bring about an even worse image.

 

“First division,” Rukia started, reaching for her own notebook and pen and began to sketch, “I’m honestly not entirely certain, but I believe that they specialize in zanjitsu techniques. There are rumors that there are a number of adjudicate members who are not Shinigami themselves but are masters at sword play and are attached to the division to teach their techniques to new recruits. Second division is pretty much the secret ops, intelligence corps, Soul Society patrol corps, and the wardens of the Maggots Nest, which is where Soul Society criminals are placed.

 

“I don’t know much about the third division; their Captain is creepy. I think they are the ones who respond to disasters, though. Like sudden storms that kill hundreds or thousands and leave a lot of confused dead, or terrorist attacks. Most of their division ends up stationed along coast lines, Midwest North America, and a number of areas in the Arabian Peninsula and the Indian Ocean coast line. The Fourth division is our medical team and general Seireitei maintenance group. They aren’t known for their combat skills; but each year that passes they are able to heal more and more injuries that hadn’t been able to before. They don’t have their own patrol areas in the Human world and only come down for general training with another division or for medical emergencies.

 

“Fifth has a lot of Kido users, often those that don’t qualify for Kido corps, but don’t have the innate skills in close combat to fit well with other divisions. A lot of their time in training is refining kido and zanjitsu, though they work on other core skills as well. Sixth is the division my brother is the Captain of. My brother is a very versatile fighter, though he specializes in precision strikes and conservation of movement. I don’t know if this carries into the rest of his division, though. I know my brother makes sure they always follow the letter of the law and make sure that rule breakers are punished, if not always as severely as many assume a noble would, because we are the Kuchiki clan and he takes setting a good example to our peers very seriously.

 

“I think that Seventh are known for their stamina; they might not be the _best_ at any one thing, but they can usually out last other divisions by hours in drawn out fights. Eighth I am pretty certain is the division that specializes in cross species disputes and often get assigned to remote areas where humans might get killed where there are still nests of spirits like Yokai that probably take offense at either the human’s in the territory, or offense at the human’s _dying_ in their territory. Usually, if they get assigned a patrol, they stick to that patrol for a long time even if they alternate with other division members. Their Captain, Kyoraku-taicho, has been friends with our Captain since they were in the Academy two thousand years ago. I think both had been candidates to take that specialization when they first made Captain.

 

“Ninth manages our Newspaper, among other things. Beyond that, I’m not entirely certain what they do. I just know that they have a lot of patrols in Europe. Tenth is made up of creative thinkers, I guess you would call them. Their Captain is currently Histugaya-taicho, who graduated the academy in a year and is still really young. I guess they can be explained as this; if most people would try to go around or over a wall, Tenth would be just as likely to try and dig under it.

 

“Eleventh is the close combat division. They end up in areas that produce a lot of Hollows, like Africa and Central and South America, as well as active, official war zones. They think that using Kido is a sign of weakness, I’ve been told, and often is the place where Shinigami who don’t have much ability except swinging a blade go. Twelfth is essentially our R&D, though they also manage our communication services and other things that keep the Gotei 13 running smoothly,” Rukia finished listing, turning her note pad to reveal rabbit Shinigami with numbers on a white haori doing different activities. It was still a bit indistinct, but at least she had made her characters different enough from each other that it could be easily noted that they were supposed to be different.

 

“So as far as the planning goes, the captains thought they were making a good set up for a crisis,” Ichigo stated as he finished his own notes. “Thirteenth would distract, seventh would out last it, tenth would come up something odd that might work for the simple fact that it was an odd idea, second and twelfth would gather information and maybe come up with a definitive plan, while eight would likely try and convince the local yokai to either help or not hinder your progress. The problem is you guys haven’t trained together, so rather than seek help from a fellow Shinigami, you trust a largely unknown Celestial Envoy more to help solve the problem.”

 

“I guess so,” Rukia hesitantly agreed. “But I also figure you have a vested interest in this problem to work out well, too.”

 

“I do,” Ichigo agreed. “But if I was in a reversed situation, I’d hope that I could call back to my superiors if for nothing more than to call a doctor or something, especially since your phone got fried.”

 

“I can still receive orders with the pager,” Rukia said, slightly mournfully as she looked at the slightly out of date item.

 

“Sorry that I’m more relieved that our power grid had been unaffected than the fact that I fried your spirit phone,” Ichigo said levelly.

 

“It had a Chappy design on it,” Rukia said gloomily, her eyes wide and watery. Ichigo rolled his eyes at the dramatics. Then the pager began to beep.

 

“Show time, I guess,” Ichigo said, as he went to his door and opened it. “Hey guys,” he called out into the hallway. “Rukia’s pager finally picked up a Hollow! We should be back soon!”

 

“Be careful Ichi-nī!” Yuzu called back from down stairs as the phone began to ring. Ichigo heard his younger sister answer it.

 

“Can I come, too?” Karin asked eagerly as she ran out of her room, jacket in one hand, a bundle of ofuda in the other.

 

“There will be school tomorrow,” Ichigo evaded. Honestly, he wanted either Kagome-san or Shiranui-sama to give a skill test before he even seriously contemplated his sisters in a live, dangerous scenario. The other night was enough for the elder brother’s nerves.

 

“Ichigo!” Rukia called out as she swung around him to show him her pager as she knocked him out of his body with the soul removing glove and caught his now unconscious body; her voice a controlled panic.

 

The teen was barely able to begin processing the address on the pager when Yuzu called up from down stairs. “ICHI- NI! Something is wrong at Inoue-san’s house!”

 

 

* * *

 

Orihime shook like a leaf against the wall, trying to figure out what was going on. She and Tatsuki were just eating the dinner Tatsuki’s mom had cooked for her, with Tatsuki congratulating her for hugging Ichigo (even if he still was rather oblivious to the opposite sex as an object of special interests), when she had gotten a bad feeling and reached for the ofuda that Ichigo had made just for her. Tatsuki picked it up rather quickly, too, and had started to stand when something, a blur, charged through the floor in front of them. Tatsuki was able to fight it off decently, but between its tail and the fact that Orihime was sitting useless in the room (while trying to call Ichigo) that already was not all that big, it still did not take long for the martial artist to get harmed.

 

Orihime had tried to help, but the pacifist was just knocked back and pushed out of her body. It had taken a moment to realize that she had been knocked out of her body, but after having watched Tatsuki dive to protect the chain that was connecting her spirit to her body, Orihime quickly realized that she was like one of those coma patients that were aware but unconscious like in movies. It was during this that Orihime came to two horrible realizations. First was that the monster had a hole in its chest that did not look like a recent injury and a broken mask from when Tatsuki punched it that reviled her dead brother’s face. Second, that Sora just spat acid at her best friend. “Tatsuki!”

 

The female martial artist was able to doge for the most part, but the acid still caught her leg, causing her to stumble and fall. Sora reared up on his serpentine body and looked like he was going to spit another shot of acid and Orihime ran to interfere. “Sora-ni! Stop it! Please, stop it!” Orihime sobbed as stood between her brother and her best friend.

 

“Orihime, don’t! He’s not-” Tatsuki protested but was cut off by Sora.

 

“Orihime,” Sora rasped. “You remember me. I’m so glad; I thought you had for gotten me completely.”

 

“How could I forget you?” Orihime cried. “You’re my brother! You raised me, and took care of me; how could I forget you?”

 

Before the monster with her brother’s face could answer, the wall from the apartment next door exploded and knocked the serpent like creature back into the opposing wall. Once the dust settled, Orihime was surprised to see Sado-kun standing in front of her, but wondered what was wrong with his arm. His right arm looked like it had been replaced with some sort of cybernetic armored arm with black armor plating and white stripe running from his fingers up to his shoulder through the middle of his arm. Orihime would have been upset at being let out of the cybernetic upgrade if it did not look so organic. Still, when this was all sorted, Orihime was going to have to interrogate Sado-kun because that looked so cool!

 

“Sorry I’m late,” Sado-kun said. “Work was running late.”

 

“Nice entrance,” Tatsuki deadpanned.

 

“Ichigo can fix it if he really is feeling better.”

 

The Monster with Sora’s face roared and whipped its tail at Sado-kun, forcing the taller teen through the window.

 

“Sado-kun!” Orihime cried as she staggered over to the broken window (and wall).

 

“See Orihime!” the monster that had Sora’s face cried. “Do you not see! They are trying to keep us apart!”

 

“Sora-ni stop! Please stop this!” Orihime begged as she turned back to serpent monster. “They aren’t trying to do anything like that! Please, Sora-ni, stop!”

 

“Sora?” a familiar voice asked in an odd tone. Orihime turned towards the broken window and saw her light haired crush in a dark traditional uniform with white kote and sune-ate covered in markings like Shiranui-sama with Sado-kun beside him being supported by two Tanuki in an anthropomorphic form. Orihime would have been more excited about finally seeing Ichigo’s Celestial Envoy uniform if not for the situation and the unheard of look of consternation painting his face. “As in your brother, Sora?” Orihime nodded and Ichigo’s eyes shined with grief and dismay even as his face slid into a fierce mask of determination.

 

“You,” Sora hissed with a hate Orihime had never heard come from her brother’s mouth while he was alive. “You are the one. You are the one that made my Orihime forget me!”

 

“I am not!” Ichigo snapped. “Do you not remember? We talked before I sent you on!”

 

“What?!” Rukia exclaimed from where she had snuck over to treat Tatsuki’s acid burns.

 

“You,” the monster with her brother’s face growled as his body coiled. “You lie!” He launched himself at Ichigo and Orihime found herself moving before she fully processed the thought.

 

Orihime flinched at the sudden pain in her shoulder but wrapped her arms around her brother in a hug anyways; tears spilling from her eyes in what she was sure were more from her emotional pain than her physical one. “I’m sorry, Sora-ni,” Orihime sniffled. “I only stopped praying because I wanted to share with you all of the happy things that were happening now.”

 

“Orihime?” Sora asked, his voice sounding more normal even if it was very confused. “Little sister?”

 

“ _Land and its souls, hear my declaration,”_ Ichigo declared, while his voice sounded like it normally did when he was making some sort of declaration, there was an odd feeling of weight to them. “ _I am the Envoy of Takamagahara! My Commands are of the heavens, my words of the Divine!”_

 

“Ichigo! Stop!” Tatsuki shouted in panic even as the Tanuki (and Sado-kun) skittered away. “We don’t know if you can still safely-”

 

 _“Heed my commands Spirit!”_ Ichigo continued heedlessly. Orihime turned at the feeling of warmth and saw a golden glow snake up from kote and sune-ate and wrap Ichigo in a fragmented aura. _“Thy mind has become fog, thy words twisted like knotted thread into Untruths! May my power be the sun through the fog, the blade through the knot! Thy being be true, thy words be true, thy self be true! Such is the command of the Heavens, so mote it be!”_

 

When he finished his proclamation, the golden aura around the teen exploded out like a wave and filled flowed through the room. It felt like a warm burn, like stepping out into the summer sun after having been inside all day. Orihime fell backwards on her butt as Sora reared with a scream of pain; he coiled into a ball and rolled around on the ground, clawing at the mask that flaked off at every stroke.

“Sora-ni!” Orihime stuttered as she pushed herself back to her knees as the masked fully fell off. She crawled over to her now sobbing brother, even if he still had the body of a monster, and gently cradled his head to her.

 

“Oh, kami!” he moaned. “What have I done?”

 

“If you were bewitched, then it is hardly your fault,” Ichigo corrected, his voice was one of those firm yet gentle tones like police officers on TV have as he haltingly knelt next to the siblings, taking care to not accidently hit Orihime in the face with his sheathed daichi that hung across his back. His face was tight with strain, and the tone of his skin seemed to be paler than it had been moments before. “Do you remember who I am?”

 

“Yes,” Sora said mournfully. “You are the one who tried to save me after the accident and made it so I could pass on earlier this year. You promised you would keep an eye on Orihime for me.”

 

Ichigo’s expression remained unchanged but Orihime thought she saw a faint dusting of pink on his cheeks. Orihime’s traitorous (in that it was a really, _really_ inappropriate time to be thinking about this sort of thing) soared at the thought of Ichigo’s actions being guided at an as of yet unrealized return crush on her; but her brother was hurt and _changed_ , she needed to focus on what was happening rather than what she wanted to happen. “Good,” the Celestial Envoy said, his tone unchanged. “Can you remember what happened between then and now?”

 

“I was wandering in the other world,” Sora answered. “There isn’t much to do there except to wander and explore the different districts. It was just like any other day there and I heard someone call my name. I responded before I really thought about it; why would someone know and use my full name when I have only introduced myself with my given name in this after world?

 

“There was some sort of flash of light from the shadows, I don’t know what,” Sora continued, his voice filled with self-loathing. “Afterwards I was filled with maddening loneliness and hunger. It feels dull now, remembering, but I still remember the all-consuming hate that took me over that whispered that it was your fault and the fault of all who kept Orihime from praying to me and that only Orihime could fix it. I don’t know why I thought that, or what I thought could be done, but that is what I remember.”

 

“Sora-ni,” Orihime said sadly, another tear escaping her eye. Part of her wanted to scream; why her brother? Why was her brother turned into a monster? But Orihime knew that Ichigo did not know yet, either, and it would not be fair to put even more stress on him when she knew that he was already going to do all that he could to figure this out. That was one of the things that she admired about him.

 

“Do you remember anything else about the ones that did this to you?” Ichigo pressed in a way that Orihime recognized as him just trying to return to the pertinent topic.

 

“No, just the flash of light in the shadows and the honeyed words that whispered that hate into me,” her older brother reaffirmed. “I doubt I would even recognize the voice if confronted with it.”

 

Ichigo nodded, a scowl on his face that Orihime identified as the ‘I don’t like this but know it can’t be helped, yet’ scowl. “Right,” Ichigo said. He shifted as he drew the sword on his back. “This is a Shinigami’s blade. It can purify you and return you to a normal soul in Soul Society; as much comfort as that is now.”

 

“That is fine,” Sora said. His serpentine body coiled to have him rise above the two teenagers. “After what I have done, after what I was trying to _do_ , I would rather experience a second death now while I am sane and can appreciate it rather than falling back into that madness.” He reached for the blade and stuck against his throat.

 

“Wait,” Orihime choked out. She rubbed a hand across her eyes as she stood. “Maybe this all was done for a really bad reason, but there is something good from it. Now I can finally say what I should have that day. ‘Have a good day, Sora-ni.’”

 

Sora gave her a watery smile back. “You too, Orihime-chan,” he answered like he always had right before piercing the blade through his throat. Rather than blood or anything painful looking, light flowed from the blade to his extremities and turned him into a black butterfly that flew off into the night. Unable to hold back the reawakened grief of her lost, Orihime turned and began to cry onto Ichigo’s shoulder (the closest to her). Rather than back off like she was afraid he would, he carefully patted her on her uninjured shoulder.

 

“Don’t worry,” he said in a comforting tone. “I’ll get to the bottom of this.

 

“I promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Terms  
> shinriki (神力)- holy/celestial/divine/god power. because everyone else has a Japanese compound word for their power.
> 
> Onmitsukidō- Bleach's answer to the ninja and samurai in feudal japan.
> 
>  
> 
> stuff that can be ignored below with spoilers for cannon below that.
> 
>  
> 
> What Ichigo does is something I believe is called kotodama. I can no longer find the original page that I read this, but in Shintoism, if a being of power (usually a kami or powerful Yokai) knows the proper spoken words (and probably their written version as well) they can make the universe force it into existence. In the connecting myth, Amaterasu used this to conjure five men out of a pledge between her and Susanoo to prove his honesty. In addition of conjuring items, if you know the proper name of a being, you can bind them to you if you have enough power or can otherwise trap the being whose name you are essentially claiming as your own. It is a similar concept as the Egyptian secret name (where the only being in existence that knew Ra's true name was Isis because she forced him into a corner and made him give it to her so she could have leverage over him). It is one of the explanations for why certain gods fuse together in myth, I think.
> 
> In this particular instance, Ichigo, like when trying to force Sode no Shirayuki out of his soul, is commanding the powers that be to do his bidding; in this case, break whatever binding spell that was affecting Sora. Ichigo can get away with this because he is the Celestial Envoy of Takamagahara, has considerable power on his own, and Shiranui (Amaterasu) has strength especially in purification/exorcism/and curse breaking to whom Ichigo is bound to. I haven't explained it yet, it is the reason why their are many Tanuki and Kitsune in her terrestrial territory. I figure after the Ninetales incident in the Okami game, she would focus on keeping something tragic like that from happening again on her watch. 
> 
> However, this has side effects. Ichigo did not have permission to do so against another being, so starting off, he was essentially swimming up a river with a strong current rather than just diverting the power to do so (so the golden glow of shinriki was not all enveloping). Second off, he was in his shinigami form with another being's power in the middle of his soul and source of his power that he needed to keep separate from himself, rather than absorb, to work around while in a different state of being than he usually is in when enacting this form of command making his control really, really bad (thus, leaking power like a sieve worse of than the normal in cannon). This means he essentially exhausted himself to a point where if a hollow had popped in and aimed for an instant death shot, Ichigo's response time would be severely limited and would likely take a critical hit (unless it was an espada, who would likely manage to kill him). So Ichigo will not be trying to do this again anytime soon.
> 
> Now for why this chapter was hard; Orihime doesn't live on cloud nine, she lives on cloud 81 or something like that. there are only about three points in time where there is opportunity for her to be brought down low enough to react in away us more normal people could easily express; now, with her beloved older brother trying to kill her, Hueco Mundo with the psychological torture she undergoes, and in the Fullbring arc for the same reason as previous. I would hope that the primary reasons for the change in action and behavior is obvious, but for why Orihime broke down crying at the end rather than just ask a bunch of questions like in cannon is because she just found out her brother was forcefully taken from the afterlife, turned into a monster, and made to believe her crush was responsible for it, with the only thing that could be done to keep him from going insane again was to stab him with zanpakuto which would only send him to the same place that this horrible thing happened in the first place. I think that is bad enough for anyone with emotions to express them in an out of character way.
> 
> Also, can anyone guess what had happened with everything else? comment your guess an I will answer.
> 
> Authors live off feedback. Really.
> 
>  
> 
> Spoilers below-----------
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> I have already worked out why Ichigo has a hollow, so Zangetsu stays Zangetsu, though that two blades thing I can totally work with. 
> 
> I have also started developing how the existence of the Vandenreich fits into my story that I wouldn't be surprised if it is vaguely cannon by the time we get to the end of Bleach, but if I do talk about them, it wouldn't be until the sequel. This particular book of a Fanfic is being written until the end of Deicide or its equivalent. Yay for long author note! See you soon, hopefully.


	8. The Starlight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The distinction between lost and found, hope and hopeless are focused on a single point.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If this is late, my apologies. My grandfather died and I was unable to write for two weeks. I will be continuing to update, but I cannot guarantee a timely manner as I am going to be moving back to my home state to be nearer to my grandmother. Please let me know if this does not flow right and I will go back and edit again.

# Chapter 7 The Starlight

 

Ishida Uryū tilted his head towards Inoue’s apartment as he felt the flare of shinriki released by Ichigo. He had pulled on the reiraku when he first felt the hollow’s presence, but after the Quincy determined the presence of Arisawa-san already present with the pacifist, Sado-kun’s grey speckled ribbon moving in a manner to indicate heading towards the location, and Ichigo-kun’s red and gold speckled ribbon change from the dulled red of being in a living body to a vibrant red of a Shinigami unhindered by mortal body; the Quincy decided that the situation was well at hand. While the fact that the Celestial Envoy used shinriki against a Hollow a second time when he has had some practice with his new found Reaper powers was a bit worrisome, Uryū could gage from this distance that the light haired teen was nowhere near the condition he had been after the last time and was still at a satisfactory reiatsu level for his health. So rather than be another body at a place that was already rather cramp, the blue eyed teen focused back on his task: research.

 

On a whole, the Quincy was rather successful on finding new information, including what he hoped to find, amongst his grandfather’s notes. While there were many notes on Quincy techniques in his grandfather’s notes, a number were either to be used against either Hollow or Shinigami or could only be performed by multiple Quincy in tandem which was generally useless since he was now allied with a temporary Shinigami and Ryūken did little more than practice and smite anything unwanted that tried to take advantage of the hospital, making it harder to find what Uryū needed. It took him time to find the right set of notes as Sōken did not start to theorize what Quincy and Shinigami could do together until, if the dates were truly significant, after Uryū’s mother died.

 

Ishida Kanae had always had a weak constitution, Uryū remembered. If there was the slightest chance of catching an illness, his mother caught it. Uryū had been babied for much of his childhood to try and insure that he would not fall into the same tendencies. The Ishida Quincy Clan had thought themselves largely successful as the heir to the Quincy legacy could run outside and eat anything and not suffer allergic reactions, stayed healthy as classmates fell ill, and was as bright and energetic as any other child. But nearly six years before, after a long period of rain, Uryū caught the Flu. He hadn’t thought he was sick, but one second he was arguing with his mother about being able to play out in the rain, the next, Uryū was waking up in the hospital after having been in unconscious for nearly two weeks. He was still weak and tired easily for weeks after; his mother never woke up.

 

Uryū pinched the bridge of his nose, forcing his glasses to move out of place as he closed his eyes and exhaled his morose feelings out. Miss his mother and grandparents, he might, but as the Last of the (active) Quincy, he needed to focus on what he was reading. Why, if it was his mother’s death that triggered the change, would Sōken suddenly go from considering Shinigami the lesser of two evils to a possible ally, Uryū couldn’t begin to guess; but it did go beyond holding Hollows off until Shinigami could arrive. Shinigami were generally fighters in close or cross range, Quincys were their opposite in preferring long range; this was well known. But manipulating reishi to catapult allies and hinder enemies? Or, more importantly for Uryū’s purposes, using Hirenkyaku in conjunction to the release of a Shinigami reiatsu to cross oceans in mere moments.

 

It was highly theoretical, though, and never tested. If the Quincy had to guess, it was one of the things that his grandfather had hope to test that fateful day when the Shinigami of Seireitei (it was becoming necessary to think of them that way as Ichigo definitely was _not_ of the Soul Society and Rukia, as Uryū had come to understand, was now more or less an exile and was not a _bad_ person) failed to up hold their duty and _fight the damned Hollows._ The theory of it was simple enough to an expert of Hirenkyaku. Hirenkyaku worked by moving reishi, reiki, and reiatsu to either form a vacuum in the energy that would pull the Quincy (and possible passengers) the desired direction like a sail on a sail boat or a platform that could carry people or objects like a wagon, or a surf board. The more energy introduced to the system, the faster a Quincy could move.

 

Quincys generally had low reiryoku levels, not terribly higher than any other generic medium, even if they could generate powerful reiatsu levels through reishi absorption. This made it so most Quincys in the past were limited by reishi in the air and reiatsu released by their enemies to both attack, defend, and dodge at any great speed. Shinigami could reach a higher reiryoku level and produce their own energy to fight but once they expended it, they needed to rest and eat to regain it. Put together these things, a Shinigami releasing energy, and a Quincy manipulating it, the Hirenkyaku could make them go far faster and far farther than either could alone allowing for Shinigami to reach Hollow attacks that are more out of the way at a faster time.

 

Uryū had a higher reiryoku level than the Quincy norm and could do more because he could produce more energy himself. This did not mean he was anywhere near the monstrous levels that Ichigo had, though. If what Ichigo had done really was mimicking Hirenkyaku… if Ichigo was really using Hirenkyaku… if Ichigo could really manipulate reishi and other forms of spirit particles like that, what did that make him? He couldn’t be a Quincy, could he? Uryū and his father were the last, weren’t they? Ichigo wouldn’t _lie_ to him, would he? If it wasn’t for the fact that Uryū had seen the orange haired teen tell a civilian a bold face lie, Uryū would have thought the other teen incapable. But as far as he knew, Ichigo’s whole maxim was based on being as truthful as was safe; creating panics by being brutally honest was not the way to save lives, after all.

 

But Ichigo wouldn’t lie about them being family or not, he couldn’t! Family was just as important to him as it was to Uryū, even if they only had a few people. No, _because_ they only had a few people in their families, their clans, did the two teens care about them so strongly. But then, Ichigo never had talked much about his family beyond his father and sisters, even in the beginning….

 

_The Last of the Quincys smirked in satisfaction as his Heilig Pfeil ended the threat of another Hollow releasing his bow of reishi back into the atmosphere. It was the beginning of the break between school years and Uryū was taking the time to actually use his skills as he was trained to. Next year he was going to be going to Karakura High. It was just the next step in his goal of being self-sufficient so that he need not rely on Ryūken’s money. Of course, that meant he had to sacrifice going to a prestigious academy filled with the rich and famous that his family had been pouring money into for his attendance even before his mother had her last illness, then he would sacrifice going to that school. It was practically blood money, now, anyways._

_Even if Ryūken was insisting on him using some of that money, what was still his monetary inheritance from his grandfather, to pay rent on the apartment he had signed for (which, admittedly, was something of a relief to be bullied into as his options otherwise were somewhat disheartening), Uryū could not afford an apartment away from his father and specialized education working at a sewing store a few hours each night. Even if that meant giving up a school where there was an international accredited archery club he was already the star of. Even if he doubted that this school would give him much of a challenge academically. Even if he would never see any of his acquaintances and club mates again just as he was beginning to think that he could even tell them his secret that kept them from being friends…._

_A chain wrapped around him, restricting his arms to his chest._

_Panicked, the Last Quincy tested the tightness of the chain as he tried to pick the reiatsu that was supporting the chain. With very little give and the reiatsu resisting all attempts to be absorbed, Uryū wondered how a Hollow or a Shinigami could get close enough to him with the Quincy detecting them to chain him in… beads? Straining against his binds a bit harder, Uryū confirmed that what chained him were in fact beads, like what priests would use to pray at temples. Wait, did that mean that what caught him was a…_

_“I don’t know who you are, or whose authority you carry, but as the Celestial Envoy of Shiranui, whose territory you now stand, I demand to know what you have done to that soul!” a young, male, and_ human _voice commanded._

_Uryū turned and stared his captor. The teen could not be much older than he was even if he had nearly two inches on him in height. The other boy’s brown eyes were narrowed with suspicion, his mouth was a pressed into a scowl, and his stance and reiatsu control was superb, now that Uryū was really looking in the right direction to perceive it. While the light hair (that Uryū could not tell if it was the more natural, if odd, honey for his nationality coloring of hair or a bleached punk style in the lack of good light) would make most see a brawler in the other teen’s stance, with Uryū having watched a (former) sempai  of his go from sprawled on his taller cousin’s shoulders for the view to punching out a group of Yakuza in three second’s flat when they threatened the younger students (including the teen’s younger brother) on their school’s field trip to the business district of Tokyo, Uryū had spent his junior high years learning to read – non-traditional – martial stances. The teen’s shoulder might have been slouched, but his feet were spread to be balanced as the rest of his body was loose to react with the beads that held the Last Quincy tight. And his reiatsu, which Uryū realized was really,_ really _terrifyingly vast, was spread out over the ground; not absent, but spread out enough to blend in with the rest of the flora and fauna to one not paying attention._

_“Well?” the teen asked, releasing his control over his reiatsu to make it from neigh noticeable to suffocatingly present. The threat did not need to be spoken._

_“I do not know who Shiranui is,” Uryū answered honestly, not really wanting to fight a human even if he had his hands free. “But I struck the Hollow with a special combative skill of my clan, Quincy: Heilig Pfiel. We use it specifically to combat Hollow Souls.” If the boy did not know of Quincy, he did not need to know that the Hollows were destroyed._

_The chain loosened slightly as the other teen rolled the words around on his tongue. “Heilig Pfiel, Heilig Pfiel. Is that German?” the teen asked._

_“Yes,” Uryū answered. “My clan originated in and had strong ties to the Holy Roman Empire while it still existed.”_

_“So, you were the people who worked for the Pope? Or the people hiding from the Pope?” the teen asked in honest curiosity, his face loosening into a more relaxed expression. The rest of his stance did not change. Before the archer could fully consider the question, the parts of the histories Uryū had read never really talked about their stance on the Catholic Church; the teen turned as though listening to someone. “Well, some would say that is not a bad place to end up, even if it is not the preferred one by our standards.” The chain loosened completely and teen pulled it back to himself, using his reiatsu to wind it around his body._

_Uryū was about to ask after the other teen’s sanity, talking to the air as he was, when he heard a snuffled snort moments before the bushes moved to reveal a blindingly white dog. It must have had some of a European dog breed mixed into it from its sheer size; its shoulders being centimeters higher than an Akita’s average and a different stance than Uryū would expect from a dog of the Akita’s temperament. Its eyes were too intelligent._

_“Oh, right, Christians, um,” the light haired teen stumbled. “May I present to you the Illuminous and Just Defender of Japan, the high lady of the old territory of Kamiki and its modern day counter parts, the White Wolf Shiranui-sama, Kami of the Twilight. Though she is more specifically over the dawns than sunset. She was partly responsible for the Tanuki incident a few years ago.”_

_“The Tanuki Incident?’ Uryū wondered while staring into the dark eyes of the ‘wolf’. “What Tanuki Incident?”_  
  


_“Erm,” the other teen stumbled. “Did you just move here then? Your accent sounds mostly local, so I thought that you would have known. Everyone in town at least knows that there was a Tanuki incident, if not all of the details.”_

_“Oh,” Uryū said awkwardly. “I have been attending a school closer to downtown Tokyo and our class often got more international news than local.”_

_“That would explain it,” the pale haired teen proclaimed confidently, stepping forward to clap him over the shoulder in very familiar manner. “Don’t wory, we’ll get you caught up on importan local news.”_

_“So you were taught spiritual arts by a wolf kami?” Uryū asked for clarification the next day at a small ice cream shop the last Quincy agreed to meet the Celestial Envoy, Kurosaki Ichigo, at. Even if he could believe that the ‘wolf’ was not a normal wolf, he still did not quite believe that something that was essentially an animal to him could teach such a specialized skill. Or that they would even work for a human._

_“Primarily,” Ichigo agreed with a careless shrug as he spooned Belgium chocolate ice cream into his mouth. “Shiranui-sama believes that my mother probably would have begun teaching me what she knew after my birthday if she hadn’t died the month before. If she was trained enough to consciously sense the monster before it tried to kill me, Shiranui-sama says she must have been trained enough to sense that my sisters and I would need training. Shiranui-sama capitalized on the fact that I had strong spiritual pressure without any familial training or any who could give such training in my family to make it legal, by spiritual world standards, for her to train me how she sees fit. Even if my dad believes in these things, Shiranui-sama said that he is so spiritually numb that even if I and my sisters live with him the rest of his life, he might never see ghosts that well. It makes me wonder if he had been attacked by something that takes the part of the spirit that produces energy before we were born. It would help to explain the lack of family; Shiranui-sama does not feel the need to look into it, though.”_

_“A bit of a cold way to think of your life, isn’t it?” Uryū asked his… friend? Could they actually be friends?_

_Ichigo shrugged and took another bite of his ice cream._

That was it, the Quincy thought with a start. The reason he could have latent Quincy abilities and not know about it, practically stared at him in the face. Uryū himself was not taught how to use his Quincy abilities in full until _after_ he turned ten years old. Certainly, he had been given some exercises to train himself and bring his reiryoku up, but that was all he had been taught to do before. If Ichigo’s mother was a Quincy, then between Ichigo’s monstrous reiryoku reserves and high reiatsu output when at rest, then the only other thing, endurance, was being covered by Ichigo’s Karate classes. There would not have been a need to tell Ichigo anything especially since Shiranui-kami had been making it uncomfortable for Hollows to stay in the area for years.

 

Except, Uryū realized uncomfortably, for the first two weeks of June when she had to be out to help with summer solstice. Certainly, Shiranui-kami trusted that Ichigo was strong enough now that he could watch the whole of the region for a longer period of time than just those two weeks like she had now; but before this point there would have only been non-combative kami in Karakura for those two weeks.  Including the week that Kurosaki Masaki died.

 

Not anticipating an attack, child nearby, out of practice (Ichigo never saw his mother practice spiritual arts, and Shiranui-kami seemed to believe that she might not have actively practiced for a number of years); any Quincy would have balked at an outright shoot out. But with his having an absurd amount of reiryoku, more than most hollows, Ichigo should not have fainted at a sudden murderous presence of a Hollow even as a child. Not with Quincy blood in his veins blunting the innate panic humans feel at the presence of Evil and the fact that before this incident, Ichigo had already confronted yokai who would feel far more terrifying to his spiritual senses then a simple Hollow. Why, then, would a Quincy blooded Ichigo have fainted at his first contact with Hollows?

                                                                                                                                             

Frowning at his grandfather’s notes and wishing he knew where his father stashed the rest of them and the other clan books he had not thought of asking for when he left home that spring, Uryū sighed and pushed himself out of his chair. He could get no more answers here. The rest would have to be tested tomorrow after school.

 

* * *

 

“It’s no good, Aizen-sama,” the Third Captain, Ichimaru Gin, said behind his mask of near innocent disappointment. In his mind, at the border between being in the moment and his inner world, there was no mask of slit like eyes and perpetual false innocence; only cold blue eyes, a determined line set his mouth, the serpentine form of Shinsō’s white scaled body coiled around him in comfort. “Whatever it is that the Kurosaki boy is doing, the sensors fried again. Whatever happened after that tall boy arrived is gone; and so is the Hollow you made.”

 

“If this is only going to continue, then we are wasting our time going out and using our more valuable Hollows to test this, this _human_ ,” Tousen snarled, once again agitated that whatever it is that the Kurosaki boy could do gave the blind man a headache and a nausea rivaling any bad hangover.

 

“While it is a pity,” the cold hearted bastard said in a tone that was both light and designed to make the intended target feel like a scolded child, “I cannot say we have wasted our resources. After all, we have confirmed that the Kurosaki boy seems to have allied himself with two people capable of both seeing Hollows and some ability to combat them. The taller child may even have Fullbringer abilities.”

 

“You have to admit, Tousen-san,” Gin’s mask said with a cheerful smile. In his mind, the Captain of the Third sneered at the blind man. “That _is_ kind of interesting.”

 

“Interesting or not, Aizen-sama,” Tousen implored. “We should be reserving our better Hollows for our fight with Seireitei, not using them against a mortal child who has no reason to want to get involved with the Soul Society’s affairs. After all, that Hollow we just lost was the most stable of our few Hollows made from plus souls of the Rukongai. It would have been valuable to study.”

 

“Perhaps,” Aizen agreed in a way that meant he really did not. “But with our dear Kurosaki-kun’s life having been saved by Kuchiki-san, in a roundabout manner, he will undoubtedly feel accountable for any misfortune that falls upon her while in his care. While I am surprised that he and his friends seem to have obtained such a level of control on their ‘own’, as it were, that only means that we will have to make sure the final pre-test is of a higher level than originally planned, there are still a few lessons for him to learn that by doing anything different than what have already arranged. We will just move forward with our plan to take over the Central 46 chambers. And Gin-kun?”

 

“Yes, Aizen-sama?” Gin said with his usual tone. In his mind, Gin snarled while Shinsō hissed sweet promises of what they would do to the bastard when they finally got their opening.

 

“Take the recorder to the Twelfth Division and ask them if they have any knowledge of what caused it to malfunction,” the sweet toned monster said. “America is known for a high number of spiritual anomalies in these past few centuries; you would have a greater chance of not raising questions with the quest for this baffling occurrence. I truly wonder how Urahara is doing it; whether it is something he made on his own, or is it something that he picked up from working with the Quincys?”

 

“Sure thing, boss,” Gin acknowledged pleasantly. In his mind, Gin growled with the knowledge that despite the fact that the-would-be god apparently did trust him; the Captain of the Third division was still the disposable one. Oh, Gin could understand, from all manner of views, why he would be chosen to be the one to possibly blow his cover. Aizen was the leader, the one with the ambitions and power to be successful, if Gin wanted the ambitious man to be successful. Tousen was blind and immune to the illusions casted by illusion master and had to be kept happy to keep them on Aizen’s side. Gin was supposed to be whole heartedly loyal and willingly to perform any role Aizen desired of him.

 

Even so, Gin couldn’t help but think they were missing something. On a whole, Gin did not care as long it did not prevent him from enacting his revenge on Aizen for Rangiku. So many souls have already been destroyed that the brat’s inevitable destruction, for the Kurosaki boy was truly a brat of a child, if not a brat of an infant, by being an entirely new soul born in the living world, would weigh against him anymore than any others that have been lost. The brat might have abnormally strong reiatsu and a near Quincy level of control over it despite the lack of formal Quincy training, but Gin refused to believe that he was truly different from any of the other souls that have already been sacrificed. To do so, might make the would be back stabber think him valuable, and to think the Kuroasaki brat valuable would make Gin hesitate when it came time to kill him. A hesitation that would in turn get Gin killed before his vengeance could be inflected.

 

But he could not help but wonder at whatever it was that Urahara came up with to ward the areas of interest after the Grand Fisher killed Kurosaki Masaki. While her death had not been the actual goal, it seemed to have the same result as what Aizen was looking for with the Kurosaki child beginning to train his reiatsu and control. But almost as soon as there was evidence to show that the child was beginning to learn how to control his power, wards went up that fried anything technological from Soul Society. Eighth division had mentioned not long after that the Yokai, the strange animals that even Aizen disliked attempting to influence, were all but revolting in the nearby area, so the three conspirators had backed off and decided to do visual checks rather than risk Urahara detecting their persisting observations and directing the Yokai towards them as a convenient target. Waiting until the main part of the plan was to be put into motion.

 

It quickly became apparent that whatever it was that was being used to ward the Kurosaki home was nearly full proof against Aizen and Tousen. Tousen described it as though being near the Sōtaichō in a bad mood, even though he couldn’t actually _see_ (or what passed as seeing for the blind Shinigami) what the warding was; practically searing his ‘sight’ and gave him the effects of a hangover. Aizen could not approach at all, though he tried to pass it off as being beneath him and more important to be in Seireitei to diffuse suspicion of a missing captain. That left checking up on the brat up to Gin. After all, suddenly being besieged by guilt that made him want to vomit was something Gin could grimace through.

 

While spying in person was not as effective as the sensors would be, Gin could still see that Yoruichi would meet with the Kurosaki brat and his odd dog companion at times to teach him some form of kidō that Gin did not recognize. And that the brat picked up, of all things, calligraphy and painting. And got himself involved with the Yokai on a deep level. And with the human law enforcers. Gin might have only passed on the fact that Yoruichi did give the brat some training and that the Yokai seemed to like him, but that did not mean he did not notice the fact that the dog seemed to be leading the boy sometimes, or that the dog seemed to _see_ him when he was shrouded in a cloak that _Tousen_ couldn’t detect through and tolerate him as long as he did not get too close, or that the boy genuinely loved his family, or liked chocolate as much as Rangiku like dried persimmon….

 

In his Inner World, Gin used Shinsō’s blade to viciously slash at the sugi sapling that was stubbornly growing in the middle of the vast, sun scorched field of unmarked graves and Persimmon trees.

 

In Seireitei, Gin hummed as he grinned his way to Twelfth Division.

 

Knocking on the gate to the Twelfth division’s R&D section. “Hello, little scientists! Is Kurotsuchi-taichō in?” Gin called cheerfully, his mask mind nearly the same as he truly did take pleasure in annoying the scientists. “One of my Unseated officers found something he might find interesting.” He continued to yell down into the R&D building until he got his desired response.

 

“Yes, yes, yes!” the irate voice of the Twelfth division captain snapped from within the building. “Everyone back to work!”

 

Emerging from the building with his shadow of a vice captain behind him, Kurostuchi-taichō and his painted face appeared before him. “What do you want? I happen to have important work to be doing.”

 

While his mask remained cheerfully undaunted, in his mind, Gin rolled his eyes. “One of my officers noticed that one of the energy sensors in his patrol zone got completely fried,” Gin told the scientist as he pulled out the sensor retrieved from the girl’s apartment from his inrō. “I’ve never heard of something capable of taking out our sensors like this, so I thought you could take a look and tell me what-”

 

Not letting the Captain of the Third finish, Kurotsuchi-taichō snatched the device from Gin’s hand and took it apart. After a momentary glance at the nearly melted insides, the Captain of the Twelfth sniffed in disdain and tossed the pieces back at his fellow captain. “Shinriki damage,” Kurotsuchi-taichō declared. “Go to the Eighth and ask them. For some reason beyond the thoughts of those capable of logical reasoning, the Twelfth is banned from havening the list of items in the human world necessary to make the required amendments to the sensors to prevent such cataclysmic malfunctions upon exposure to shinriki.”

 

Gin openly blinked in confusion at such a quick assessment and diagnosis of what had been plaguing the Conspiracy for nearly six years. “What is Shinriki?” Gin honestly asked.

 

“And they claim that you are a genius!” the scientist exclaimed in aghast.

 

“I think we can both agree that my genius lies in killing things rather than knowing things like you,” Gin said with the barest hint of dryness escaping through his mask of cheerful indifference.

 

“Indeed,” Kurostuchi-taichō sniffed. “Just what did they teach you in the Academy? Shinriki is the energy produced by earth bound kami. Usually they are considered kami of life and nature to our death and human souls, though they are not our opposites like the Quincy were. They do have a heavier energy, though, so sensors made in the Soul Society over load wit out some sort of materials from the material world to act as a buffer. But, as I said, you’ll have to go over to Eighth to get a sensor. Or request one of their officers to take over the area. If I have to be forced admit anything about those unscientific and all together superstitious bunch, they _do_ have the best results when dealing with those illogical creatures.”

 

After that, the Scientist and his assistant kicked the Captain of the Third division out of their domain and, as he needed to keep up appearances, Gin went to the Eight.

 

“Where did you say your officer was stationed?” Kyōraku-taichō asked curiously he poked at the melted sensor.

 

“I forgot where exactly,” Gin said with sheepish grin, though in his mind his expression was curious. “Somewhere Mid-west North America. Why does that matter?”

 

“America?” the Captain of the Eight said in a tone that was nearly gleeful. “About damn time they started showing up there again.”

 

“Probably a storm or wind kami,” Ise-fukutaichō declared, the usually reserved leutenant almost as excited. “The tornadoes are probably the only thing natural that still causes them to watch in awe.”

 

Gin looked at them both in confusion. “I know we’re called a sort of kami,” he said. “But I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

 

Kyōraku-taichō gaped at him in disbelief. “Don’t know! What do you mean you don’t know?” he all but spluttered.

 

“Ichimaru-taichō probably is not at fault,” Ise-fukutaichō said in an uncomfortable tone. “I barely remember the part of the curriculum going over Kami in the Academy. We were never tested over it, and so likely, with how fast he cleared the academy, Ichimaru-taichō would have likely skipped over the section entirely.”

 

Gin would have laughed at the other captain’s expression, if the mixture of horror and fury did not trigger a deep part of his soul that yelled to run and hide. “Right then,” Kyōraku-taichō said when he re-mastered himself. “Can’t be dealt with right now, or with you. But I can give you a general over view. Kami, that are not Shinigami, are beings that are, for lack of better understanding, born from both the natural power of the world and the wonder humans have for forces of nature. Anything natural, as in, not shaped by humans, can produce a kami. Sunlight, wind, seas, trees, animals; anything that living humans can become in awe of and, both intentionally and unintentionally, send small bits of their reiryoku and reiatsu towards to combine with natural energy to form its own living and sentient being of pure power.”

 

“So,” Gin asked with a suspicion that he did not know what to do with, “there can be kami who are cats and dogs, too? They’re animals.”

 

“Cats more often than dogs,” Ise-fukutaichō agreed. “While they may be associated with a Kami, dogs were specifically bred to become what they are today. Many domestic cat species started by them merely walking into human farms for the rats and got used the humans constant presences. This affects the way their energy flows from nature into them which would, for all intents and purpose, act as the base form for any earth kami to come into existence.”

 

“America has been nearly wholly absent of Kami for two centuries,” Kyōraku-taichō continued. “Europe managed to maintain a few despite everything else. Though, you would probably recognize it as the odd broken feeling in the air in that area.”

 

Gin frowned slightly. He supposed that the other captain meant the severe lack of reishi that made it almost uncomfortable to operate in that area. “So these other types Kami are necessary for our survival?” the Captain of the Third asked with honest curiosity.

 

“Perhaps,” Kyōraku-taichō replied carelessly. “They certainly make things easier. A number of them can make areas that hollows run far and fast from. Or ship a soul straight to Soul Society.”

 

…Which is exactly what happened around the Kurosaki brat.

 

“They can do all that?” Gin asked; his mask requiring his voice to be more innocent than he would be without; but the shocked wonder was still the same.

 

“Not all of them, but a fair number of the older and more powerful ones can,” Ise-fukutaichō clarified. “The older they are, the more likely they are to have helped in the founding of Soul Society and would know how to send souls to us. The more powerful they are, the more likely that the force of the ideals that helped to form them will hang in the very air their power touches for longer periods of time with a much heavier force. There are many whose ideals are completely contrary to the existence of Hollows, and so Hollows will either find the areas of those kami painful or otherwise repulsive and not enter.”

 

“Does that mean that there are also areas where there are kami whose ideals are completely contrary to those of the Shinigami and we would be unable to enter,” Gin dug. If they could….

 

“Because we are human in origin, it would be based on the individual rather than the Gotei 13 on the whole,” Ise-fukutaichō agreed, readjusting her glasses. “It is part of how of how divisions are assigned to different regions. You foster in your division the respect and understanding of things that would make mortals collapse in despair, however temporarily; so your division is assigned to areas where things that would cause quick and sudden despair. The Eleventh foster blood lust and honor in the fight so they are assigned to areas where fighting is common place.”

 

“And since these are areas where humans reflect on these things often, these are the sort of ideals that would form the local kami and so the division members would not meet any problems?” Gin wondered aloud.

 

“You got it, kid,” Kyōraku-taichō grinned. Ise-fukutaichō whacked him with a book she was carrying.

 

“There may still be problems, but far fewer,” Ise-fukutaichō corrected. “Find out which region this kami is located in and we will deliver the new monitors to the area. Tell your officer to keep alert for anything unusual that do not seem to be technological or Hollow in origin and have them on reflect on the emotions they felt upon encountering it. This will help us determine the type of kami it is and what the best way to approach it will be. If it is one of the old Tribal ones or ones from elsewhere in the world, then we will have records of how to interact with them. If they are new ones entirely… well, we will direct one of the domains of the kami towards them in order to prevent any deadly mishaps.”

 

“So kami are more powerful than Shinigami?” Gin asked, after all, he now knew exactly what it was that Aizen was trying to emulate. Taking the place of the Soul King, the Kami of the Shinigami, always had been just an abstract thing.

 

“It falls into the same argument of are Hollows more powerful than Shinigami because they are the power of multiple souls?” Kyōraku-taichō extolled. “Or are Shinigami stronger because we can continue to improve ourselves, get stronger, and be at one with ourselves without risk of another soul taking control of our body. Kami are as strong as what forms them, the worshipers they have, and the devotion of those worshipers. Too little of any of these things can either kill them or make them fall dormant.”

                                                                            

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Gin said absently, his mind wandering. “I’ll look back through my records and give you the patrol district later.”

 

“Alright then,” the Captain of the Eight said cheerily. “Have a good rest of your day.”

 

Gin made his farewells automatically; his mask still full of fox like smiles.

 

In his Inner World, a battered sugi sapling began sprouting once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shinriki- made up term to describe the reiatsu equivalent for kami.
> 
> Sugi- often called Japanese Cedar although it is not actually in the Cedar family. It is an evergreen.
> 
> let me know if there are any more terms I forgot to define.
> 
> Sorry if Gin seems wholly sane. He is crazy; anyone who takes up butchering people as a means to get into position to exact revenge against someone who harmed his only friend can only be called crazy, but he is capable of rational thought. I will endevour to show how many of his screws are loose as the story progresses.

**Author's Note:**

> I will probably end up editing/changing this later. will not promise timely updates.


End file.
